Championship leader Lewis Hamilton extended his dominance in the 2015 season as he raced to a comfortable win Sochi after teammate Nico Rosberg retired just eight laps into the race with a throttle pedal issue.

Sebastian Vettel finished second for Ferrari, his fourth consecutive podium while a superb drive by Sergio Perez gave Sahara Force India their first podium of the season after both Valteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen crashed into each other on the final lap of the race.

Nico Rosberg started from pole as he looked to cut Hamilton’s lead in the championship and was doing as well as he could, even leading after a safety car bought on by Nico Hulkenberg spinning on the very first lap, before a throttle issue forced him to slow down as he struggled to get back into the pits, where he was left with no choice but to retire as early as the eighth lap. A second safety car period on lap 13 when Romain Grosjean crashed into the barriers saw Perez and Daniel Ricciardo, along with Carlos Sainz and Jenson Button dive into the pits for the soft tyres while the top eight decided to stick with the super-softs.

Perez was the one who benefitted the most, however. Ricciardo retired with suspension issues on lap 49 while running fifth. Perez’s tyres were degrading quickly and it came as no surprise when Bottas and Raikkonen both managed to pass him with their fresher tyres on the penultimate lap. Raikkonen was not settling for fourth behind Bottas, however, and went for broke on the final lap.

Even though he was gaining, overtaking at turn four was close to impossible even as a brief glimpse of space opened up, with the result that Raikkonen ended up crashing into Bottas, ending the latter’s race. Perez immediately took advantage to finish on the podium while Raikkonen limped home in fifth, later demoted to eighth by the stewards after he was handed a thirty-second penalty.

Felipe Massa also took advantage of the final lap crash to finish fourth, while Daniil Kyvat finished fifth in his home race. Felipe Nasr finished sixth, Pastor Maldonado finished seventh ahead of Kimi, while Jenson Button finished ninth for McLaren, ahead of Max Verstappen in tenth.

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