Valtteri Bottas Tag

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas maintained his grip on the top of the timesheets at Silverstone but he was pushed hard by team-mate Lewis Hamilton who finished under five hundredths of a second adrift of the Finn. Bottas had topped the opening session by just seven hundredths of a second but his time of 1:29.106 was eclipsed early in the session as Hamilton quickly dipped into the 1m28s bracket on soft tyres. He then improved to time of 1:28.543 to sit six tenths ahead of the rest of the field. Half anRead More

Valtteri Bottas set the quickest time of opening practice for the British Grand Prix, finishing seven hundredths of a second ahead of Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Meanwhile, Sebastian Vettel became the first driver to run with the new Shield frontal impact protection system being trialled by the FIA. The Shield, a transparent open canopy system constructed using polycarbonate and extending down the nose of the car, was fitted to Vettel’s Ferrari ahead of the session. He then completed a single installation lap with the device in place before returning toRead More

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas took his second career Formula One victory with a powerful yet controlled drive lights to flag win ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo held off a late surge from Lewis Hamilton to take the final podium position. Bottas got away best at the start, but so good was his getaway that there was the suspicion the Finn had jumped the start. Further back Max Verstappen made the poorest start, bogging down badly when the lights went out. He was swamped by rivals andRead More

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas scored his second pole position in Austria, edging Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel by just four hundredths of a second. Lewis Hamilton finished third but a grid penalty for a changed gearbox is set to drop the Briton to eighth for tomorrow’s race start. Bottas established the narrow advantage in the opening runs of Q3 and when Romain Grosjean’s Haas broke down on track as the quickest men began their final flyers, the yellow flags shown as a result meant that there could be no improvement. Haas’ Kevin Magnussen,Read More

Sebastian Vettel took over at top of the practice timesheets at the Red Bull Ring finishing just under three tenths of a second clear of chief title rival Lewis Hamilton who suffered a brake failure late in the session. The Ferrari driver set a best time of 1:05.092 with just under a quarter of an hour left in the session. The German had been on course to claim top spot but after setting two fastest first sectors he came across a slower Hamilton and lost time in the last partRead More

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest-ever lap of the Red Bull Ring as he powered into early command of practice for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. Until this morning Hamilton’s own 2016 Q2 lap of 1:06.228 had stood as the marker for quickest lap on the Styrian track but the three-time championship brushed past that time in the second half of this morning’s opening practice session at the Spielberg circuit, lapping in 1:05.975 on the soft tyres, the hardest of the three compounds on offer this weekend. Hamilton’s soft-tyre time wasRead More

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