Russian Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton error opens the door for Valtteri Bottas to take pole in Sochi

On a weekend when once again Ferrari lacked the pace they showed before the Singapore GP a fortnight ago, Lewis Hamilton’s main opposition came from his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

And though Hamilton had dominated practice from Friday afternoon onwards, and the first two qualifying sessions, problems in the second sector on both of his final laps in the third session consigned him to second place on the grid as Bottas never put a wheel wrong and took his first pole position since Austria.

The Finn, who scored his first grand prix triumph here last year but has had a tough time all through 2018, finally got it all together in a Mercedes that had clearly benefited from further upgrades.

He was half a second off Hamilton’s best in Q1, much closer in Q2, and in the end both of his laps in Q3 – 1m 31.528s and then 1m 31.387s – proved faster than the 1m 31.532s best that left Hamilton in second place.

“It was a nice lap,” Bottas said with a matter-of-fact tone that disguised just how important this step forward will be to a man who has struggled since Baku to match his champion partner’s pace.

“In the end I managed to improve a little bit, and I didn’t know what had happened to Lewis. I’ve only been once on pole this year, so this is good. It’s been a pretty good track for me here, I’ve had some good laps. A lap here takes some concentration, but I’m very happy, for sure.”

Bottas’s performance earned him a hug and a grin from Hamilton, as he offered congratulations. The Briton had been significantly faster in the first sector than the Finn on his first Q3 run, but then fell three-tenths behind in the second yet ended up just four-thousandths of a second off by the finish. But he was a second off in sector two on his final run, after pushing too hard.

“Big congratulations to Valtteri, he did a better job,” he said. “It was intense, as always, and I’ve had quite a good weekend so far, but my last two laps were not special at all. But you can’t always get it right.

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“I’m not really sure where it got away from me, but I know that Valtteri also picked up some pace. My middle sector hadn’t been too bad. In Q1 it was really good, in Q2 not so great [though he was still fastest in all three sectors both times], but it was up and down there. On my first lap in Q3 I was down three-tenths there but okay in the first and last sectors. Then I pushed quite a lot on my second run and just overdid it a little bit in sector two. I think I’d picked up a bit of dirt on the outside tyres, so I had less grip for next corner.

“But the upgrades are working really well here and the guys back at the factory and here have done an impeccable job, and it’s so motivating when you see upgrades coming all through the year.”

Mercedes’ pace once again left Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton’s main title rival, looking bemused. Tellingly, he had no real problems to report on his Ferrari, which suggests that the Mercedes has regained its once-unchallenged title as the fastest car.

“We have to see what happens tomorrow,” the German said. “As we have seen, the tyres are very important, but overall I was pretty happy with them. The car was pretty quick and the balance was good, and it peaked in Q3 the way it should. I made a tiny bit of a mistake on my second run but that just cost a couple of hundredths. There weren’t any big issues. We showed our full potential today.”

Worryingly for Ferrari, that meant their car was still six-tenths of a second off Mercedes’ pace. And the Scuderia was lucky that Red Bull had chosen to have drivers Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo taking engine penalties here, to sweeten their chances in the final five events. They both ran in Q1, where the Dutchman and the Australian were both faster than the Ferraris, but there was no point in either running in Q2 since they will be starting from the back of the grid together with stablemates Pierre Gasly in their Toro Rossos and Fernando Alonso’s McLaren-Renault, all of which also incurred engine-related penalties.

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It remains to be seen whether a resurfaced section of track on the grid will favour the front-row starters, and whether Ferrari’s acknowledged power advantage will help Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen on the long drag to Turn 1.

“I was just joking with Valtteri and telling him to remember what happened last year, where he started from P3 and I was on pole,” Vettel chuckled, referring to how Bottas had outdragged him to grab the lead then and had held it despite massive pressure for the rest of the race.

“It will depend on so many things at the start, so we go racing and try do our best. We’ll fight as much as we can tomorrow.”

The other real interest will lie in the battle between the Mercedes drivers, assuming they get their starts right. Will Bottas concede to his team leader?

“My approach is to try and win the race,” he said flatly. “You can’t have any other goal when you start from pole, but we are here as a team fighting for the world championship which Lewis is leading with a gap to Sebastian and a very big gap to me, so you always keep those things in mind. But I aim to win the race.”

Were he to do that, and Hamilton finish second, it would cost the latter seven points in the fight with Vettel, and right now despite a 40-point advantage over Vettel, he can’t afford that as a price to pay for those mistakes in sector two.

“All of our goals are to win this race,” Hamilton said, referring to himself, Bottas and Vettel. “It’s a very difficult track on which to overtake, so the start will be interesting, and after that it will be all about strategy and giving it everything we’ve got.”

If either of the Silver Arrows drivers get it wrong, Vettel will be waiting to pounce, and to make up for what happened to him at the start of the Italian GP at Monza.