Bottas thrilled with maiden pole in F1

Valtteri Bottas pulled off his first-ever pole position in Formula 1 on Saturday, and he did it in style.

His Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton had thrown down the gauntlet at the start of Q3 with a time of 1:28.792s that looked impossible to beat. But Bottas dug deep and went 0.023s faster, while Hamilton's own response fell short.

"Obviously I'm really happy," beamed the Finn after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix. "It's the first pole in my career.

"It's my fifth season now in Formula 1. It took a few races but I've got it and hopefully it's the first of many."

Bottas beats Hamilton to Bahrain pole!

"It's not an easy track to get everything right," he pointed out. "It is quite technical. There's quite a few difficult braking points, turning-ins to the corners. It's easy to have a lock up or just miss the apex slightly.

"It's just getting the lap together and get the car well balanced, and it was a good enough lap for the pole today so that's good."

Mercedes had been hiding their true form somewhat in practice, especially in the daytime sessions held in hotter conditions than will be the case in the Grand Prix itself.

"I think we've made a good job this week and to really focus on the evening conditions," Bottas acknowledged. "We really managed to get a lot of lap time out of the car in the cooler conditions. Hopefully that's going to help us."

Unfortunately for Bottas there's little chance to celebrate before planning begins for Sunday's race.

"You need to enjoy what you've done so far in the weekend," he said. "But the main thing is tomorrow.

"There's no point starting dreaming about anything. We need to look at everything. Whatever we can do tomorrow. Work together as a team and make a good strategy, and plan for the race tomorrow."

"It's all just focussing for the race and geting the maximum out of it.

"But definitely a good place to start. I think as a team we can be really strong tomorrow and hopefully we can get that one-two."

GALLERY: All the pictures from Saturday in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.