Valtteri Bottas will start Sunday’s Qatar GP from the ninth starting grid.
Valtteri Bottas drilled the best qualifying performance of the season from Qatar. PDO
Friday saw one of the most dramatic F1 time trials this season.
This time, the drama focused on the events after the box office, when first by Lando Norris the lap time was rejected after much deliberation.
After that, he inherited third place Oscar Piastri already had time to comment on his news in a TV interview before the information about the Australian’s dropping also came out.
Finally, the pole man Max Verstappen gets a Mersu driver next to him in the front row of George Russell. Team mate Lewis Hamilton rose to third due to the misfortune of the McLaren men.
The Finns were affected in such a way that Valtteri Bottas got the best starting grid of the season. He got ahead of Norris and thus starts from the ninth grid for Sunday’s race.
– It was a good day for us. It’s really been a while since we’ve been fighting for those places, Bottas was happy in an interview with Viaplay.
– Yes, it’s a bit of a lottery. The track changes every lap and it’s hard to predict what it will be like at the end of qualifying. Today it was important to find a good rhythm and trust the car.
Team mate far away
Team mate Zhou Guanyu was almost the last of the whole bunch. Bottas also has his work cut out for him to score valuable World Championship points on Sunday.
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Before that, there will be a sprint race on Saturday. It is even more difficult to get points there.
– You can set the same goal for the sprint time trial. Now we got into a good rhythm, so there’s nothing to do but tap. Let’s try for the top 10 again. There is nothing to lose in Sprint. Let’s attack, Bottas promised.
– It’s not cold here for long, he lamented on Viaplay about the offer of Islamic Qatar.