Valtteri Bottas Tag

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor The Azerbaijan Grand Prix had everything this year: crashes, controversy, surprise results and a ton of interesting statistics to process. Chief among them was the fifth win of Daniel Ricciardo’s career. His win from 10th on the grid is the furthest back a driver has won since Fernando Alonso won from 11th in the 2012 European Grand Prix. The last driver who actually won from 10th was Kimi Raikkonen, way back in the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix. With five wins, Ricciardo is tied with Giuseppe Farina,Read More

Daniel Ricciardo won a hugely dramatic, incident-packed Azerbaijan Grand Prix as title contenders Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel both finished off the podium. Mercedes Valtteri Bottas passed Williams’ Lance Stroll across the line at rthe flag to take second place. The Williams driver became the youngest ever podium finisher in a rookie season at 18 years and 239 days and the first Canadian to stand on the podium since Jacques Villeneuve in 2001. Vettel, meanwhile, finished fourth after he was handed a 10-second stop and go penalty following a bizarreRead More

Valtteri Bottas set the quickest lap of final practice in Baku as both Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen hit trouble. Mercedes driver Bottas set a best time of 1:42.742 on supersoft tyres to edge our Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen by just 0.095s. Lewis Hamilton was third just over four tenths of a second behind his team-mate. In the opening half of the session Bottas was quickest on the soft tyres, with most others opting to run the supersoft throughout. The early runs left Bottas 0.395 clear of the supersoft-shod Raikkonen withRead More

Max Verstappen topped a tight second practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in which the top five drivers were separated by a quarter a second. However the Dutch driver’s good work was undone seconds from the chequered flag when he crashed out at Turn 1. Valtteri Bottas was second for Mercedes, exactly a tenth adrift of the Red Bull driver, while Verstappen’s team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was third fastest with a time of 1:43.473, 0.111 off the pace, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was 1500ths behind Ricciardo, with team-mate Sebastian Vettel fifth,Read More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Sebastian Vettel is in a class of his own in 2017. The Ferrari driver just picked up his third win and sixth podium of the season in spectacular fashion by overhauling team mate Kimi Raikkonen with a strategy that recalls memories of his friend and mentor Michael Schumacher. He is calm, he is confident, he is excited, and it shows. He is relishing the budding rivalry with Lewis Hamilton and the challenge of beating Mercedes, but he is already a step ahead of them. In anotherRead More

Kimi Räikkönen took his first pole position in nine years with super final lap in Monaco that saw him finish just four hundredths of a second ahead of championship leader Sebastian Vettel as Ferrari locked out the front row. Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas was third but team-mate Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in Q2 in 14th place. Ferrari were quickest out of the blocks in Q1 with Raikkonen on track first, the Finn quickly followed by team-mate Vettel. It was the German who set the early pace and though he was brieflyRead More

After a Friday dominated by Mercedes, Ferrari fought back in final practice with Kimi Räikkönen heading a one-two for the Scuderia ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel. After leading the way during the medium-tyre shod opening half of the session with a time of 1:22.409, Raikkonen bolted on soft tyres shortly after the halfway point in the one-hour final practice session and immediately lowered the benchmark by more than two seconds, logging a best time of 1:21.214 that stood until the end of the session. He was quickly joined at theRead More

Mercedes set the pace in the opening session of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, with the three-time champion finishing almost a second clear of third-placed Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari. Defending Constructors’ champions Mercedes have brought a heavily revised car to the first of the 2017 season’s traditional European races and at the end of the first session the gap to the team’s rivals at the end of the first session was significant, with Räikkönen finishing 0.935s adrift of second-placed Valtteri Bottas. Sebastian Vettel was fourth for Ferrari, just overRead More

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas withstood sustained late-race pressure from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to take his first Formula One victory after rising from third on the grid to take the lead at the race start. When the lights went out at the start, Bottas pounced, with the Finn getting a tow on the long run to the first corner to power around the outside of Räikkönen and Vettel to claim the lead. Through the first stint, Bottas built a slim advantage but after the drivers’ single stop for supersoft tyres Vettel beganRead More

Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen set the pace in the opening practice session for this weekend’s Russian Grand Prix, beating Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas by 0.045 at the Sochi Autodrom. Bottas’ team-mate Lewis Hamilton was third, more than half a second off the pace. After running on soft tyres early on, Räikkönen’s time of 1:36.074 came midway through the session, with the Finn bolting on a set of supersofts to better the earlier efforts of the Mercedes drivers on the same compounds. Hamilton had made the early running but it was Bottas whoRead More