Valtteri Bottas Tag

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

Valtteri Bottas set the quickest time of the final day of in-season testing in Bahrain, posting a time of 1:31.280 as the Mercedes driver worked through 143 laps of the Sakhir Circuit. The Finn’s time eclipsed that of Sebastian Vettel by just under three tenths of a second. The lap total gap between the Mercedes driver and his Ferrari counterpart was much greater, however, with Vettel logging just 64 laps as he spent a significant portion of the day in the garage. Ferrari had brought Vettel to the garage duringRead More

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel took his second victory of the season in Bahrain as Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton recovered from a poor start and a penalty to finish in second place ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton exerted intense pressure in the final stages, chopping deep into a 13-second deficit to Vettel but the German kept a cool head to thread through traffic and take the flag with 6.6 seconds in hand. Had Hamilton not earlier been penalised for holding up Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo during a pit stop, the battle mightRead More

Valtteri Bottas claimed pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix, edging team-mate Lewis Hamilton by just two hundredths of a second to claim the first front-of-grid start of his career. Sebastian Vettel was third for Ferrari ahead of Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo and the second Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen. Pascal Wehrlein got things underway in Q1 with a time of 1:33.502, but that was soon eclipsed by Haas’ Kevin Magnussen and then by Bottas, who elected to run with soft tyres as he set a P1 time of 1:31.041.Read More

Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen set the quickest time of final practice in Bahrain, finishing a tenth of a second ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was third. Verstappen’s running in yesterday’s second practice session was compromised when a T-wing broke off Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes and damaged the floor of the Red Bull man’s car, but he recovered this morning to confirm the Milton Keynes competitiveness here with a best time of 1:32.1934, 0.110 up on Hamilton. Verstappen’s qualifying simulation wasn’t without its issues, however, as midway throughRead More