After taking his second engine penalty in as many races, Bottas started Sunday’s race f⛎rom 16th on the grid, four places ahead of Red Bull’s Verstappen, who had also changed his power unit.

Verstappen 💞turned in an impressive recovery drive to eventually finish directly behind his championship rival Lewis Hamilton in second place, having taken just six laps to ♕get past Bottas.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race in Sochi, Hill꧋ said he felt Bottas had done a poor job for his Mercedes team b⛎y offering little resistance to Verstappen as the pair exchanged places at Turn 13.

Valtteri, it's Max

— Red Bull Racing Honda (@redbullracing)

“You can’t get away from the fact that the guy who came second started the race behind hi𓆉m and hi▨s teammate won the race,” Hill said.

“Valtteri, in the race, we were expectingജ him to put up a little bit of a defence to fight the Mercedes corner against the Red Bull team and Max Verstappen, but he seemed to just wave him through.

“Maybe he just didn’t want any trouble. It doesn𝔉’t look like he is racing. It was almost like a gift tℱo Max.”

Bottas struggled to make the same kind of progress through the field as Verstappen from the back, though both drivers benefitted massively from a cal🙈l to pit early for intermediates as rain hit late on.

Verstappen vaulted up to second, while Bo🅰ttas also📖 improved by several positions to take fifth.

Although Hamilton retook the lead of the world championship with his 100th victory, t♋he result means Verst🎃appen is just two points behind the Mercedes driver heading into the final seven races of the season.

“I thought Valtteri was fa𓆏ir with Max when they were racing wheel-to-wheel,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said.

“He didn’t lose any time passing him, and that was an i൲mportant m🅠ove in the race.”