F1 News
Bottas storms to Spanish GP pole - Qualifying report
- Jake Williams-Smith
Valtteri Bottas took pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix with teammate Lewis Hamilton in second, making it another Mercedes one-two. The Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel ended a distant third for Ferrari.
Q1 got underway with no particular rush by any team to get out onto the track. Ferrari opted to send both drivers out early on while the track was relatively empty to get their first runs completed.
Nico Hulkenberg brought out the yellow flags briefly after a mistake left him with front wing damage having tagged the barriers on the outside of turn four. His drive back to the pits was slowed by the wing being caught underneath his R.S.19, sparking on the track surface but the German lived to fight another day.
Max Verstappen's first effort was good enough for fastest of all, beating both Ferrari's by half a second. Both Mercedes' posted their times leaving Bottas first and Hamilton third, the latter having caught traffic on his fast lap.
Haas left their efforts late in the session with just seven minutes remaining but both recorded times comfortably inside the top 10. Both Racing Points, Alfa Romeos and Williams' were the ones under pressure in the final moments of the session along with Hulkenberg after his earlier mistake.
In the end, the Renault driver couldn't recover and was eliminated with Lance Stroll, Antonio Giovinazzi and both Williams drivers.
Both Ferrari and Mercedes opted to run the soft compound tyre in Q2, not risking a poor lap on the mediums for the benefit in the race start tomorrow. Mercedes produced the pace once more, Hamilton setting a track record, 1m16:038s as the benchmark, two-tenths clear of teammate Bottas.
Verstappen's first effort was good enough to beat Charles Leclerc's time and Haas' strong pace from practice was also on show with Romain Grosjean splitting the two for fifth place.
Daniel Ricciardo's first run would have encouraged Renault having lost Hulkenberg in the first part of the session while Leclerc's first run would have put extra stress on the Ferrari pit wall, just two tenths ahead of 11th position as the cars returned to track for the final attempts in Q2.
Carlos Sainz was eliminated from his home event having been knocked out by Ricciardo along with Alexander Albon, Lando Norris, Kimi Raikkonen and Sergio Perez. Leclerc left it late but was able to leap up to fourth in the standings.
Replays showed the Monegasque driver sustained floor damage on the exit kerb of turn nine having run wide over the rumble strips, perhaps affecting the handling of the SF90.
Hamilton was the first of the big hitters to take to the track in Q3 with teammate Bottas soon following but the Briton's first lap was a scruffy one, a 1:16.040s a beatable benchmark.
Bottas seized provisional pole by a whopping sixth-tenths of a second from his teammate but Ferrari was nowhere despite a new power unit update and qualifying engine modes, Vettel's time good enough only for third.
Leclerc's extra run in Q2 meant he only had one fresh set of softs left to use and was kept to a single run in the final session but Verstappen was just a tenth off of Vettel and very much in striking distance ahead of the final runs.
On the final runs, Bottas was the first to cross the line but couldn't better his initial time with Vettel unable to improve either. Hamilton was forced to settle for second 0.6s down on his teammate.
Verstappen managed to split the two Ferrari's and will line-up fourth with Gasly rounding out the top six spots from the top three teams.