JAMES ROBERTS

“Motorsport in Russia has come a long way”

S

ochi is changing. Fast. Formula 1 made its fifth visit to the shores of the Black Sea last weekend and it’s notable how the seaside town has developed since F1’s first trip there in 2014.

Back then, there was very little in the vicinity of the Olympic stadiums, built for the Winter Games that year. But following the World Cup’s visit to Sochi in the summer the region has undergone a transformation.

Bars, restaurants and hotels have sprung up and it was in a new eatery that Williams’s Sergey Sirotkin took a small selection of British media out for dinner ahead of the weekend. As we remarked on how much the area has changed over the past few years, he told us a story about his first visit to Sochi in 2005.

He was there to compete in his first professional kart race, but it’s fair to say things were rather rudimentary. He described how cattle, cows and pigs roamed free around the circuit, there were potholes in the track surface – and even an abandoned road car on the racing line which the drivers had to negotiate around.

He finished third in the race, which was won by his compatriot Daniil Kvyat, who was also competing in his first professional karting race. Sirotkin could never have imagined that 13 years later he would be back at Sochi racing in Formula 1.

Russian motorsport has come a long way since then. The Russian domestic touring car championship has a calendar of circuits, three quarters of which didn’t exist 10 years ago.

In another boost to Russian motorsport, last Saturday morning Toro Rosso announced that the aforementioned Kvyat has been given (another) chance and will get his third outing at the team – replacing Red Bull-bound Pierre Gasly for 2019. With Artem Markelov and Nikita Mazepin also coming through the junior formulae and Sirotkin expected to stay at Williams next year, the future for Russian drivers in the sport is bright.

That will naturally have an impact on interest in racing and throughout the weekend there was a healthy crowd who descended to the edge of the Black Sea for the grand prix. It probably helps that Sochi is the country’s holiday capital and enjoys a temperate climate compared to the rest of Russia all year round, because it sits on the same latitude as the south of France.

So, while the infrastructure has grown, interest is high and the location favourable, the one downside remains the quality of the track as a driver challenge, hamstrung as it is by the positioning of the Olympic stadiums. It’s the one fault in a GP that is firmly establishing itself on the F1 schedule.