After their defeat in Bahrain, Mercedes believe that they can reclaim the lead this weekend. Vettel is the current championship leader but Hamilton will be fighting hard to take it from him. The pressure is also on Kvyat, who had his famous crash with Vettel at the start here last year.
Kvyat collided with Vettel twice at the start of last year’s grand prix, taking the Ferrari driver out of the race. Receiving huge criticism for the incident, the Russian was then dropped from the Red Bull team into Toro Rosso as Verstappen was promoted.
This year he will be hoping for a very different result, having already picked up points so far this year, he hopes to have a strong weekend in front of the home crowd this weekend.
Raikkonen under pressure
With his teammate currently leading the championship with two wins out of three races, Raikkonen is under huge amounts of pressure for a strong result to prove he deserves his place in the team. Even a podium would be welcomed, with the Finn not yet finished in the top three this year. His future in Formula One is uncertain and he needs strong results to secure his seat at Ferrari for next season.
McLaren in need of improvement
After a positive post-race test in Bahrain, where they clocked up over 80 laps in a single day, McLaren are optimistic that their performance will improve. So far, out of three races, they have had one finish out of a possible 6. For one of the biggest teams in the sport, with one of the largest budgets, their performance so far has been somewhat embarrassing and needs to improve quickly.
Honda have been blamed for the issues and it is true that the reliability of their power unit is not what they hoped and they are also a long way behind on performance. But not all of McLaren’s DNFs have been engine related and, having had limited testing pre-season, they haven’t got the best aero package by any means. So McLaren themdelves need to step up their performance too because, for a top team like McLaren, finishing a race shouldn’t be celebrated but expected.
Soft tyre allocation
Pirelli have opted to bring the three softest available tyres to this weekend’s race, with degradation at the Sochi circuit one of the lowest of all. This is due to the smooth circuit and low temperatures resulting in very limited tyre degradation. Although the softest tyres are being used, Pirelli still believe this race will be a one-stop race.
All drivers will have 7 sets of ultrasofts, 4 supersofts and 2 softs. This is due to Pirelli being given control of all tyre allocations for the first five races of the season because of changes in the regulations.