Not since 2013 have we see a non-Mercedes driver lead the Formula One world championship heading into the European leg of the season.
As is the case today, the man atop the standings that year was Sebastian Vettel, who was on his way to his last title for Red Bull Racing.
The four-times world champion arrives on Russian soil with a seven-point advantage over the Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton having won two of the first three races in what has been Ferrari’s best start to a championship since 2008.
Hamilton claimed the season’s other victory with a vintage performance at the Chinese Grand Prix, where he led from start to finish in the same dominant fashion that delivered him his triple world championship success during the first three years of the hybrid era.
This year’s Russian Grand Prix sees Ferrari embrace a completely fresh challenge, as their best result in Sochi to date is runner-up courtesy of Vettel in 2015.
The Sochi Autodrom, which resides at the scene of the 2014 Winter Olympics, has been under the control of Mercedes since the first event held during the year of that Winter Olympiad.
In fact the Mercedes-Benz marque has been the only outfit in the entire history of the Russian Grand Prix to have won the race, including the two non-championship events held in Saint Petersburg during World War I.
One thing evident thus far in 2017 has been the the Mercedes AMG car’s harsh treatment of the Pirelli tyres. While the rubber itself is far more durable than any of its previous iterations, the architecture of the W08 EQ Power+ has resulted in unwanted tyre wear for the reigning championship-winning outfit.
Ferrari’s SF70H, on the other hand, has been lighter footed on its tyres, certainly more so than its silver rivals.
Cooler conditions in Russia, though, will nullify this disadvantage that Mercedes AMG has suffered at their previous outing in Bahrain, leaving no excuses for both drivers to keep up the squad’s 100 per cent record in Sochi.
Having claimed his maiden career pole position in Bahrain, Valtteri Bottas comes to a venue at which we saw his excellence in 2014. Then racing for Williams, he would have usurped Mercedes for pole position had he not made an error in the final portion of his potential pole lap.
There is plenty of onus on Bottas to perform this weekend, with the undesirable tag of ‘number-two driver’ hanging over his head. Were it not for car-related issues in Bahrain, the expectation would have been for the Finn to have finished a minimum second place.
There’s no doubt Bottas is capable of winning multiple grands prix; however, Bottas must get his elbows out sooner rather than later and assert his presence over title protagonists Vettel and Hamilton to have a realistic chance of victory.
The same is true for Bottas’ compatriot Kimi Räikkönen, who once again has been criticised for his lacklustre start to the season. While his teammate leads the standings, the senior Finn has yet to appear on the podium.
Bahrain saw a stellar drive from the 2007 world champion, where he was aggressive in his march back up the order to finish fourth. But despite his competitiveness, Räikkönen’s efforts were marred by a poor start to the race, which ultimately put him in that relatively lowly position.
The 2017 season so far has the makings of a classic Formula One title race, and the Russian Grand Prix will be one to watch – if just to see whether Mercedes will be seeing red by the end of it.
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