© Getty Images7 Things To Know About The Russian GPCan we really be going to Sochi for its eighth grand prix already? It only seems like yesterday teams were sampling the circuit for the very first time.
To celebrate our visit to the Sochi Autodrom, we've put together seven things you may not know about the Russian Grand Prix on the Black Sea Riviera.
Sochi is Russia’s largest resort city – it’s huge. The ‘Greater Sochi’ area stretches along 145km of the Black Sea coast and is one of the few sub-tropical locations in Russia. The circuit is right next to the (shingle) beach, which judging by the photographs hanging in the pit building, can become pretty crowded in Summer.
Having raced here in April and the very start of May, and October and the very end of September, the beaches and esplanade are generally deserted – though the Amusement Park next door is always pretty lively.
At 5.848km, Sochi is the fifth longest circuit on the F1 calendar, with the track 43m shorter than Silverstone, 155m shorter than Baku, 327m shorter than the brand new Jeddah Street Circuit in Saudi Arabia and a whopping kilometre shorter than the mighty Spa-Francorchamps.
Head Down On Sochi Straight© Getty Images
In terms of track camber, the Sochi Autodrom is the anti-Mugello. In 2020 we saw that Mugello had slightly banked corners, although not as banked as Zandvoort this year, which made overtaking around the outside a little easier. Like many street circuits – where draining water off the asphalt is the prime consideration – Sochi has a negative camber, sloping down and away at the track edges. This makes overtaking… difficult.
When the circuit first hosted F1 the asphalt was so smooth it produced almost no degradation at all. Nico Rosberg was the first driver to make an F1 pit stop in Sochi, pitting at the end of lap one of the 2014 Grand Prix, and proceeding to do the rest of the race on one set of tyres.
While that’s a little extreme, the race has – barring accidents – largely been a one-stop affair, even now the surface has roughed-up a bit.
Pit Stop Crew Delivering Excellence© Getty Images
Added to the smoothness of the tarmac and the difficulty in overtaking, another factor making the Russian Grand Prix a likely one-stopper is the time taken for a pit stop. At the Sochi Autodrom there is a 60kph pit lane speed limit, as opposed to the usual 80kph.
Sochi started out with the standard 80kph limit, but the tricky pit lane entry, via right-angle corners, caused officials to rethink it after the first day of practice and drop the limit to something a little safer and less likely to involve the pit entry blocked with a car in the wall.
The distance from pole position to the first corner in Sochi isn’t particularly long – but the distance from pole position to the first braking zone is. Sochi’s first turn is more properly a minor right-hand kink in the track, taken at full speed, and on which the FIA are quite comfortable having an activated DRS flap. The real action is down at turn two where, after a long drag off the grid, mayhem often ensues.
It’s proved a good track in the past to not be starting on pole with five of the seven races won from P2 or P3 on the grid. With a good getaway, the guy on pole gets the honour of giving everyone else a really nice tow down that long straight. Of course, if you’re starting alongside a teammate, there’s potential to make the track very narrow for anyone wanting to come around.
Cars Line Up For The 2019 Russian GP© Vladimir Rys
The Sochi Autodrom is located in the Olympic Park used when the city hosted the Winter Games and Paralympics in 2014.
The Hermann Tilke-designed track was baked-in to the park’s construction and utilises its service roads. It twists around the venues used for figure skating, speed skating, curling and ice hockey during the games, as well as the Medal Plaza and the Fisht Olympic Stadium, which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, before having its roof removed to create an open-air football stadium used for the 2018 World Cup.
While Sochi is the only Winter Olympics venue used for F1, it’s not F1’s first brush with the world of Citius, Altius, Fortius. The start-finish straight at the Circuit de Catalunya hosted the start and finish of the team time trial road race at the 1992 Olympics, and the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is built within the Magdalena Mixhuca Sports City complex used for basketball, cycling, fencing and hockey at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Meanwhile, the paddock at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve backs onto the rowing basin constructed for the 1976 Montreal Games. Today we use that one for our raft race…
All of these venues have faired better than Rio de Janeiro’s Jacarepaguá circuit, formerly the home of the Brazilian Grand Prix. That was bulldozed to make way for some of Rio’s 2016 Olympic Games venues.
