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Russian Grand Prix highlights: Formula One live blog, updates

1st May, 2016
Where: Olympic Park, Sochi
When: 10pm AEST
Circuit length: 5.848 km
Race length: 309.732 km (192.459 mi)
Laps: 53
2015 winner: Lewis Hamilton
Nico Rosberg at Red Bull ring (FIN/ Williams F1). Photo: GEPA pictures/ Daniel Goetzhaber
Roar Guru
1st May, 2016
88
1197 Reads

It hasn’t even been a full twelve months since their last visit, but Formula One has headed back to the former Winter Olympic Park in Sochi for the Russian Grand Prix. Join The Roar for a live blog of the race, starting at 10pm AEST.

Round four of the championship will see the drivers tackle this semi-street circuit, with the infamous Turn 3 left-hander – spanning close to 800 metres in length.

The race itself will be 53 laps, on what is one of the longer circuits on the calendar, at 5.8km.

Pirelli have stuck to the same three compounds of tyre seen in the first three races of the season; the medium, soft and supersoft.

With the Sochi circuit being friendly on the rubber, it is expected that the race will see drivers only stop once for tyres, or at most twice.

Qualifying once again highlighted Mercedes AMG’s supremacy, with Nico Rosberg’s pole position lap being seven tenths faster than the nearest competitor.

After three consecutive wins in 2016, the stars continue to align for the German with his teammate Lewis Hamilton once again succumbing to the same power-unit gremlin that put him out of qualifying in China.

Issues continue to compartmentalise for Ferrari, with Sebastian Vettel enduring a five-place grid penalty for the race, after the team opted to replace the damaged gearbox from his contact with teammate Kimi Räikkönen at the Chinese Grand Prix.

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Nevertheless there is great pressure riding on the Scuderia, who are yet to deliver upon their promise for ‘early wins’ in 2016.

Benefitting will be the two Finns. Valtteri Bottas for Williams will lead his compatriot Räikkönen from his inherited second place on the grid. Forget not their infamous final lap clash during the 2015 edition of this race.

Red Bull’s power deficiency showed during qualifying, as Williams got the better of the Tag-Heuer powered squad. Daniel Ricciardo did however out-qualify his Russian teammate in Daniil Kvyat.

Sergio Perez, who will be elevated to sixth due to the Vettel penalty, was another standout on the Saturday. The Force India team have not started 2016 as they may have hoped, but with the podium result they achieved here last year, a decent bag of points could be on the cards.

The predicted one-stop race should produce an interesting affair, however perhaps not as manic as China. Nevertheless there should be battles all-over.

Join me please, from 10pm AEST on The Roar for full coverage of the Russian Grand Prix.

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