Valtteri Bottas made it clear he wants to win Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix after claiming pole position but Mercedes may have other ideas.
The Finn, who is a Sochi specialist, maintained his record of never being beaten by a teammate in qualifying as he put one over Lewis Hamilton in Q3 to take just his second pole of the season, with his first coming in Austria.
“Yeah it was a nice lap,” Bottas said on the grid afterwards. “In the end, I managed to improve a little bit and I don’t know other than he [Hamilton] aborted his lap, but yeah it feels good.
“Still a little bit of the shakes, it take a lot of concentration but its good.”
His lap of 1m31.386s marked a new circuit record around the Sochi Autodrom and saw him almost a tenth-and-a-half clear of Hamilton, who aborted his final lap after running wide at Turn 7.
Last year, it was a rapid start from third which allowed him to go on and take what was his first F1 win and now 17 months on, he hopes to secure his fourth.
“My approach to the race tomorrow is definitively to try and win the race – you cannot have any other goal starting from pole,” Bottas declared.
“It’s just going to be the aim. As a team we’re fighting for both championships.”
There is, however, the spectre of having to be the ‘wingman’ once again and help Hamilton in his bid for a fifth title.
“Lewis is leading the championship by quite a gap to Sebastian and a very big gap from me, so we have to keep those things in mind,” he admitted.
“My approach, starting the race, is trying to win, but we’ll see how it goes.”
Also Read:
- Wolff: Bottas needs to maintain faith that luck with change
- Bottas: Failure to win a race in 2018 is “amazing”
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff appeared to make it clear there would be no other choice but to enforce team orders if the circumstances required.
“It’s going to be difficult to tell him that now after putting on pole,” the Austrian said to Sky Sports. “But we will have the conversation on Sunday morning and see how the race is going to pan out.”
In the meantime, it is a rare high moment in what has been a tough season for the 29-year-old.
“Valtteri needed to gain some confidence and that was just what the doctor ordered,” Wolff added. “He knows he has to extract everything to beat Lewis.”