SHANGHAI – Valtteri Bottas edged his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton to earn the pole for the Chinese Grand Prix Saturday at the Shanghai Int’l Circuit.
Bottas earned the pole for the 1,000th Formula One race, his first pole since last year in Russia, with a top lap of 1:31.547 during the final round of knockout qualifying.
Hamilton tried his best, but came up .023 of a second shy of matching Bottas’ lap in Shanghai.
“It feels good to be on pole. I think it’s going to be a very close race tomorrow, so it’s a good thing to start from the front,” said Bottas. “It’s been a strong weekend for us so far and it was nice to continue that way in the first session that counted. Because in the end when you go into qualifying it doesn’t matter if you’ve had a good weekend up to that point; the only thing that counts is if you can deliver a good lap. I’m happy I was able to do that today.
“I think we were still a little bit behind on the straights compared to Ferrari, but we were stronger in the corners and ultimately gained more than we lost to them on the straights,” Bottas added. “It will be a tight race tomorrow and we will need a strong race pace and the right strategy to win. I’ll also need a good start in order to keep the lead as I’m sure both Lewis and the Ferraris will be pushing. We’ve been strong all weekend long, so we need to continue to perform at this level to get the job done tomorrow.”
The Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc followed the Mercedes teammates in third and fourth, respectively. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen qualified fifth, but felt he could have done better had traffic not prevented him from making a final attempt.
The second Red Bull entry driven by Pierre Gasly qualified sixth, followed by a strong showing by the Renault duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg in seventh and eighth, respectively.
Completing the top-10 in qualifying were the Haas duo of Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean, both of whom opted not to set a time in the final round of qualifying.