🇷🇺 Formula 1 2021: Round 15

26.9.21

🇷🇺 Formula 1 2021: Round 15 - Centurion

Oh Lando. Oh no, oh no, oh no….

The British driver took a risk as the rain fell in the late stages in Russia, playing out the videogame scenario of slick tyres on rain with four laps to go and a seven-time world champion chasing you down from 25 seconds back on what turned out to be the correct tyres.

I N C R E D I B L E 💯@LewisHamilton #F1 pic.twitter.com/bjPvx2xHHG
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 26, 2021

Norris ended up finishing seventh, Max Verstappen finished an improbable second after initially starting in 20th and Lewis Hamilton took his 100th win, taking the lead and swinging the championship pendulum towards him. But this race, and this entire weekend, cannot be dismissed as another version of the Mercedes vs Red Bull story, despite the outcome.

It’s the first time since Turkey 2020, where rain affected the entire race weekend, where Hamilton won without qualifying on the front row. And that 100th win was one of just four occasions where he’s come from fourth on the grid to take the chequered flag first. Here’s a look at all 100 of his wins in F1, going all the way back to Canada 2007 to 14 years later with a win in Sochi.

More than half of his wins (57) have come from pole position, with just over a quarter (27) coming from the other space on the front row. That leaves 16 wins where he’s won from further back. The fact that 84% of his F1 wins have come from the front row should not diminish this unprecedented achievement in any way. If anything, it’s testament to how good he is not just at qualifying, but how brilliant he is at converting those good qualifying results into points.

But even in that 16% of results, there are still legendary drives, like the one outlier in Germany 2018 where a mechanical issue meant he started 14th and ended up winning the race, and later. stormed to the title, beating Sebastian Vettel that year, with Vettel’s home Grand Prix turning Hamilton’s season around.

It’s not clear yet whether this result in Russia will do the same thing for the Mercedes driver, with trips to far-flung destinations (and even one unknown) to come, with the final third of the season starting in Turkey. It’s a track Hamilton will remember well, claiming victory and taking that seventh title in the process.

LEWIS HAMILTON IS A SEVEN TIME WORLD CHAMPION!#TurkishGP 🇹🇷 #F1 pic.twitter.com/gOGfeEZxp8
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 15, 2020

You can also see where the hybrid era kicks in at the start of 2014. Hamilton won just one race in the year before the new regulations - converting pole at the Hungaroring, before winning 11 races in the first year of the current era, setting the table for the era of dominance that Mercedes and Hamilton have enjoyed.

Elsewhere, despite the result, it looks like McLaren have made the jump from the much-maligned term of Formula 1.5 to Formula 1.2 or better, given that they have been so close to the front in the past two races. Ricciardo won in Italy and Norris, after taking pole position, probably wouldn’t have won on track, but had the rain not fallen, could well have matched his best F1 result and finished second for the second race in a row.

.@McLarenF1 team boss Andreas Seidl conceded the team could have been more assertive in its request for Lando Norris to pit in the wet final #F1 #RussianGP laps:https://t.co/1RSzWI4Xdh
— Autosport (@autosport) September 26, 2021

The season is even closer, with Red Bull having taken their penalty for Max Verstappen and minimising the damage that did with a strong fightback through the field. A fresh engine at Istanbul Park could make the difference at a track where Red Bull struggled in 2020. For now, it’s advantage Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton raising his bat on a century.