5 of the Most Interesting Radio Messages from 2016 Russian Grand Prix
Only four races of the 2016 Formula One season have been completed, but Sebastian Vettel's title hopes are already hanging by a thread after the four-time world champion suffered a second retirement in the Russian Grand Prix.
Having started the season with a podium in Australia, Vettel failed to even start the Bahrain GP following an engine blowout on the formation lap before recovering from a first-lap collision to salvage second place in China.
But there was no fightback at the Sochi Autodrom, where the German was hit twice in quick succession by Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat, whose demolition derby on the opening lap left an incensed Vettel in the crash barriers at Turn 3.
With a look at Lewis Hamilton's latest technical problems—one of which was well-spotted by Kimi Raikkonen—Nico Rosberg's post-race celebrations and the contrasting fortunes of Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez, here are five of the most interesting team radio messages from Russia.
Sebastian Vettel Outraged After Another Opening-Lap Clash with Daniil Kvyat
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Not since his early Red Bull days have we seen Vettel quite so angry, waving his arms and screeching down the intercom in sheer frustration.
Indeed, in some places, his comments over the radio on Sunday were identical to his rant following his collision with Mark Webber in the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix.
As noted following the Chinese GP, Vettel was unfair to blame Kvyat for Ferrari's friendly fire in Shanghai, but behind the arrogant delivery of his lecture ahead of the podium ceremony—as reported by Motorsport.com's Valentin Khorounzhiy—was an important message.
If Kvyat continued to arrive at the first corner "like a torpedo," driving too aggressively and showing little regard for his competitors, he ran the risk of sparking a substantial crash.
And it took just one more race for that recklessness to cost the Russian dearly, with Kvyat twice hitting Vettel from behind in the space of two corners on the opening lap.
After locking up and nudging the Ferrari into Daniel Ricciardo at Turn 2, Kvyat well and truly torpedoed into a slowing Vettel in the long, fast right-hander at Turn 3, spinning him into the barrier.
As he sat with the front-right tyre dislodged from his SF16-H, Vettel was unaware his sparring partner from Shanghai was responsible for his downfall at Sochi, but in a sense it didn't matter.
On Ferrari's worst weekend of 2016—when Vettel lost track time in Friday practice, suffered a five-place grid penalty and saw Rosberg extend his advantage over him to a potentially insurmountable 67 points—being pushed around on the first lap was the final insult.
"Oh, for f--k's sake!" he screamed. "Who the f--k? Oh, I'm out! Crash! Somebody hit me in the f---king rear! Turn 2! And then somebody hit me in the f--king rear again in Turn 3, for f--k's sake! Honestly! What the f--k are we doing here?"
Lewis Hamilton Forced to Manage Another Mercedes Reliability Scare
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Following his poor starts in Australia and Bahrain, his five-place gearbox penalty and MGU-H failure in Shanghai and another loss of power in qualifying at the Sochi Autodrom, Lewis Hamilton was finally having a clean run at the halfway stage of the Russian Grand Prix.
Forced to start from 10th, the three-time world champion had made up five places by straight-lining Turn 2 on the opening lap and soon disposed of both Felipe Massa and Raikkonen after the safety-car restart.
When he finally overhauled the Williams of Valtteri Bottas on Lap 19, Hamilton would have fancied his chances of catching and passing Rosberg to claim a win that would have only slightly eroded his team-mate's points advantage but would have shattered his spirit and placed a firm lid on his confidence.
Almost 13 seconds behind Rosberg following the German's solitary pit stop on Lap 21, Hamilton had lowered the gap to just 7.5 seconds on Lap 36 when yet more misery came from his race engineer, Pete Bonnington.
"Are you there, Bono?" an agitated Hamilton queried.
"Affirm Lewis, I've got a bit on at the moment, mate," responded Bonnington in a similarly edgy tone of voice, hardly settling the nerves of his driver before delivering the bad news.
"So Lewis, it looks we have a water-pressure issue, water-pressure issue."
From that moment, the fight was over and Hamilton was left with no option but to ease off the throttle on the long straights in order to prevent another engine failure, as he later told Sky Sports' Matthew Morlidge.
Bonnington offered a rare piece of good news six laps later, telling Hamilton: "Lewis, the situation has stabilised."
But by that point, with the gap restored to 13 seconds, it was no use.
Despite managing an engine issue of his own, as Toto Wolff informed the team's official website, Rosberg was in the clear and en route to another victory.
Kimi Raikkonen Spots Mercedes Working on Lewis Hamilton's Stricken Car
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There were no real warning signs of Hamilton's latest engine problem ahead of the third segment of qualifying in Russia.
There were no plumes of smoke and no radio messages between Hamilton and the Mercedes pit wall, as we heard when his MGU-H failed in China.
But for a strangely uncompetitive time in Q2—the British driver was 0.483 seconds slower than Rosberg, having beaten his team-mate in the first segment—there was nothing to suggest Hamilton was in trouble until, just seconds before Q3 began, the FOM television feed cut to a shot of the Mercedes garage.
Suspended on its jacks with no tyres, no nose, no engine cover and no driver, the No. 44 car was being attended to by a herd of mechanics as Hamilton—eyes hidden behind those large sunglasses of his—wandered around the paddock.
As he prepared for Q3, Raikkonen would have seen those images through his personal monitor in the Ferrari garage—proving even the most inattentive drivers do pay attention to the information on those tiny screens—and the 2007 world champion was eager to ensure the team knew of Hamilton's issue.
"Did you see the video where they're taking Hamilton's car apart?"
"Yeah, looks like he has a problem," replied his race engineer, Dave Greenwood.
It was a little surprising it was Raikkonen, not the team, who first mentioned Mercedes' problem, especially as Greenwood and Co. could have used the demise of one of their main opponents to further motivate and encourage their driver in the top-10 shootout.
But you suspect it would have had no effect, for on a day Raikkonen could have claimed a first front-row start of the season, he was a distant fourth in Q3—1.246 seconds adrift of Rosberg's pole time and more than 0.5 seconds slower than Ferrari team-mate Vettel.
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Nico Rosberg and Mercedes Celebrate a Russian GP Win at Last
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In his two previous visits to the Sochi Autodrom, the Russian Grand Prix seemed to illustrate why Rosberg was unlikely to become a world champion in Formula One.
At the beginning of the 2014 event, when he found himself on the inside of Hamilton on the run toward Turn 2, he locked both front brakes, flat-spotted his tyres and effectively gifted the win to his team-mate at the very first braking zone of a 53-lap race.
There were no mistakes last year, though, as he claimed an assured pole position, made an intelligent start from the grid and played the restart to perfection following the safety car period—only for a dodgy throttle pedal to condemn him to retirement after just seven laps.
Put simply, he didn't have the talent or the nerve in 2014 and, when it really mattered in '15, he didn't have the third crucial ingredient required to win the title: luck.
As such, his pole-to-flag victory in Sunday's race felt like so much more than the latest in a career-best run of consecutive wins—it felt like he was righting the wrongs of the last couple years and finally growing into the stature of a world champion.
It was no surprise, then, that Mercedes referenced his previous near-misses as they offered their congratulations on the cool-down lap.
"Hurroo!" wailed his race engineer, Tony Ross. "Excellent drive, excellent drive, Nico. Well done, Well done, we've finally done it in Russia!"
"Terrific job, Nico, well done," added Paddy Lowe, the team's technical chief.
"Thank you, Paddy," Rosberg responded. "Awesome weekend."
"Yeah, top job, Nico!" Ross said.
"Thanks to everybody. Everything worked really, really well this weekend. Thanks a lot."
It was noticeable that Ross—normally so restrained and uber-professional over pit-to-car radio—sounded more delighted with a seventh straight win than the driver himself.
Could it be Rosberg, as he later told Sky Sports' Pete Gill, really is missing the "ecstatic feeling" and "ultimate thrill" that comes with beating Hamilton in an equal fight?
Or, more worrying for his rivals, is Rosberg so accustomed to winning these days he no longer feels the need to celebrate each individual victory like it could be his last?
Nico Hulkenberg Is No Match for Sergio Perez on 100th Grand Prix Appearance
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It was at last October's Russian Grand Prix when the tide really began to turn at Force India.
On an afternoon Hulkenberg continued his poor run of form by spinning and being collected by Marcus Ericsson at Turn 2, Perez secured only the team's third podium finish in eight seasons with a mature drive to third place.
After 18 months as equals, that was the race Perez started to establish himself as Force India's lead driver, the extra confidence allowing him to end 2015 on a high.
The Mexican has endured an unfortunate start to this season, but it was once again at the Sochi Autodrom—as both drivers celebrated their 100th grand prix appearances—where Perez offered more evidence of the gulf developing between the pair.
As Perez eased to seventh place in the second segment of qualifying—ahead of both Red Bulls and Max Verstappen—Hulkenberg was nowhere, trapped between the McLaren-Hondas in 13th and 0.489 seconds slower than his team-mate.
More concerning than the result itself, however, was the fact Hulkenberg felt he had extracted everything from his VJM09.
"Well guys, that first lap was really as good as it gets," he insisted while limping back to the garage.
Hulkenberg's misery continued in the race, when he was eliminated on the first lap for the second year in succession, with Perez also becoming a victim of the carnage at Turn 2, where he suffered a puncture.
And as the first of his two stints on the soft-compound tyres approached its conclusion on Lap 25, sixth-placed Checo was wondering whether he was driving fast enough to satisfy his team.
"Do you like my pace? Do you like it?" he asked, almost as though he was fishing for a compliment.
"You're doing well, Checo, pace is good," reassured Tim Wright, his race engineer.
With Perez ultimately recovering from the rear of the field to ninth, registering his first points of the season, his pace proved to be incredibly good. And it was far superior to his fellow centurion throughout the Russian GP weekend.
All team radio quotes, as well as timing and tyre data, sourced from the FOM television feed, the official F1 website and Pirelli Motorsport's infographic on Twitter.
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