Sirotkin expecting busy time at his first home GP

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In many ways, this weekend is the one that Sergey Sirotkin has been building up to for his entire maiden year in Formula 1: it's his first opportunity to race in his home event, the Russian Grand Prix.

The 23-year-old was born and raised in Moscow, 1,000 miles (1,620 km) away from Sochi which lies on the coast of the Black Sea. But regardless of the distance, his legion of fans will doubtless be out in force to support their 'local' hero on Sunday.

"My home race is always good," Sirotkin predicted. "It’s obviously a big pleasure to race in front of my home crowd. I get a lot of support from all over the country.

"But at the same time it will be a very busy weekend for me," he added. "As with anything in life, there are ups and downs.

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"There will be a lot of work to do, much more than compared with other weekends, so it’s going to be very intense.

"It won’t be easy to manage my time and energy, whilst still being able to perform at my best.

"It’s still a weekend I’m looking forward to, but I know it’s going to be tough!" he said.

Sirotkin heads home knowing that he's already broken his duck and scored his first championship point in Formula 1, having finished in tenth place in the Italian Grand Prix.

Now he and the whole Williams team hope that they can pick up momentum and finish in the top ten a few more times in the remaining six races of the season.

"The weekend will be very special for us as a team, as it will be Sergey’s first home Formula 1 race," said chief technical officer Paddy Lowe. "We expect to see huge support for him from the local fans.

"We head to Russia later in the season than usual, but we expect to see similar weather conditions," Lowe continued.

"The circuit itself is part permanent road, part street circuit and can be quite technically challenging. It requires good all-round performance to manage both low and high-speed corners.

"There is also a very long run down to turn two, the first limiting corner, and one of the longest standing starts of the season.

"The circuit is wide though with low kerbs which allows the drivers to attack the corners.

"We look forward to continuing the fighting spirit we saw in Singapore, in these final few events."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.