WOLFF PLAYS ‘BADDIE’ IN SOCHI

LEWIS HAMILTON was never going to celebrate the 70th — and hollowest — win of his life. Indeed, he would have desecrated his own sporting standards and achievements if he had not understood the unsatisfactory nature of a Russian Grand Prix orchestrated by his Mercedes team switching their two drivers around halfway through the race. ‘It doesn’t feel great,’ said Hamilton (below). ‘I have never finished first and felt the way I do right now.’ The intervention came on lap 23 of 53 when Toto Wolff, pressed the ‘tactics’ button, and gave the call that was passed on to Valtteri Bottas by his race engineer, Tony Ross: ‘You need to let Lewis by into Turn 13.’ The Finn complied. Hamilton was now in the lead (other than for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who had yet to stop). This is how it ended: Hamilton first, Bottas second, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel third. And so the Briton leads Vettel by 50 points with five rounds remaining. It seemed unlikely that Hamilton, who started second, would want to be gifted victory. Nor is it the Mercedes way. They have traditionally allowed their men to take each other on. Wolff summed up his predicament well. ‘I would rather be the baddie today,’ he said, ‘than be the idiot who lost the title at the last race in Abu Dhabi.’ In other words, the extra seven points Hamilton scored by winning rather than finishing second were not worth jeopardising this late in the season. Vladimir Putin, whose Russian Federation sponsored the distortion of sport here in Sochi on a gravely more larcenous scale than the farrago witnessed yesterday, handed over the winner’s prize. Hamilton asked Bottas on to the top step of the podium. Neither of them smiled but they drank the champagne together, however flat it tasted.