Bottas wins the Russian GP and Hamilton falls into the Netflix curse: Schumacher’s record unmatch

Michael Schumacher’s 91 career victories, an all-time Formula 1 record, are about to fall. And they will sooner or later, by the grace of Lewis Hamilton. The first opportunity of the Mercedes driver was in this Russian GP. Also, despite starting from the pole, he harms by an obvious mistake of the wall.

The victory was for the other Mercedes, a team that keeps the full house in Sochi, they have won all the races. Valtteri Bottas saved the furniture for the team and took the race ahead of the always combative Verstappen and an angry Hamilton.

Lewis Hamilton at the Russian circuit

All this recorded from the German team’s box by Netflix, and for the second season in a row. It has given them terrible luck. Toto Wolff’s team will be seriously afraid every time the platform wants to record them because Hamilton already got a serious scare on Saturday.

Hamilton started with entry problems: he warns in the middle of the exit. He was investigating for doing the exit rehearsal outside the designated area. In the end, cost him a double 10-second penalty since he broke two rules. The fault was his engineer, who told him it was legal.

On the first lap, Verstappen lost second place despite pulling out and in comparison, fighting to hold off Ocon and Ricciardo’s highly competitive Renaults. At least he was able to continue, something that two drivers could not do: Lance Stroll, who crashed after a spinning top, and Carlos Sainz.

The Madrid hit the corner of the wall and ended up staying out. The security car came out.

After the restart, Hamilton confirms with a 10-second penalty, which causes him to get very angry. Especially with his chief engineer, Peter Bonnington, who tells him that the exit test was correct.

The hex-champion made his first and only stop of the race. He served that punishment, and rejoined the race in eleventh place, just ahead of Sebastian Vettel. He started there a comeback, forced to look for the rhythm (which he had) to try to pass rivals.

Knowing that the champion was chasing him, Verstappen didn’t slow down at all. The Dutchman kept a distance of about ten seconds until the end. He looked for the fastest lap of the race (and the extra point) but ended up taking the winner of the race.

Hamilton will have to wait for the next race, the Eifel GP, which will hold at the legendary Nurburgring circuit, to match Schumacher’s 91. Of course, the chapter of Netflix, which has been this weekend recording in Mercedes, will be to see.