F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Bottas focussed on winning, not on helping Hamilton

Valtteri Bottas was celebrating his second career Formula 1 pole position on Saturday. He pipped Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to the top spot by 0.142s in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring.

"What a special feeling. I got it set up nicely and it's great to get the second pole position of my career.

"I enjoyed it today," said the Finn. "The car was getting better and better as the grip was coming up. Had a decent lap in the end - not quite perfect - but it was good enough."

The first time Bottas started from pole position was in April in Bahrain. On that occasion, Vettel went on to win the race and Bottas finished third behind his team mate Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton finished qualifying in third place, but will be starting tomorrow's race from eighth because of a five-place grid penalty. Hamilton is 28 points ahead of him in the championship and the nearest challenger to Vettel for the title.

However, Bottas insisted that he's not about to compromise his chance for victory to help Hamilton.

Bottas pips Vettel to pole for Austrian Grand Prix

"From what I have seen in the pre-race strategy notes, that kind of plan is not on those notes," he said. "The target is not less than winning of course for us.

"I'm going to focus on my own race, rather than looking behind me tomorrow. But we will not underestimate the Ferraris. It's going to be close and should be an interesting fight.

"Lewis can fight back from where he is starting. If you start playing games it gets tricky," he explained. "If the car behind gets DRS and the slipstream, then with just one mistake they can get the win.

"We need to focus on trying to have a good start to the race and we need to win the race," he said. "The weather could be important tomorrow but starting first, I won't complain if the rain stays away.

"I'm sure Lewis still has a good race ahead. A lot of time to come back and get points for us as a team.

"I think like Sebastian said it should be a interesting, good fight tomorrow," he summed up. "I can't wait for tomorrow, honestly!"

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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.