F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Bottas looking to 'the start and strategy' on Sunday

Valtteri Bottas says that tomorrow's Dutch Grand Prix should be a great race, and that Mercedes will be able to utilise team strategy to take the battle to Red Bull and pole sitter Max Verstappen.

Verstappen pipped Lewis Hamilton to pole by 0.038s, with Bottas set to start immediately behind the lead pair from third place.

"The car has been feeling good, but Red Bull were just a bit out of reach today," he said afterwards. "We're still lacking a little bit in the first sector, particularly through turns 2 and 3.

Read also: Verstappen narrowly secures home pole for Dutch GP

"My last lap in Q3 wasn't the best," he conceded. "I was up on my time until turn 11 but then got a bit too greedy and braked too late.

"But we have two cars in the top three and that's important, so it's all to play for and we'll be on the attack tomorrow.

"It's a great track to drive, especially in the middle sector where it is so fast, and also the banked corners," he added.

"It's a hard track to overtake on but the start and strategy will provide opportunities. I'm sure we will still see a great race."

As Verstappen will be on his own at the front end of the grid with his team mate Sergio Perez down in 16th, the team is busy working out how best to use its strategy options tomorrow.

"We're satisfied with where we ended up in qualifying, commented team principal Toto Wolff. "Valtteri did a strong job throughout the session.

"Having the cars in P2 and P3 is a good starting point for tomorrow. There are options on both one and two stops for the race and we have both our drivers up at the front.

"That gives us the chance to play different strategies and see where we end up. I think it's going to be a really exciting race and there's a good atmosphere here, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out."

"It's going to be very difficult to overtake but having two cars at the front is an advantage," agreed the team's chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin.

"The indications from the sessions so far are that incidents are likely, so there's still plenty of opportunity."

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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.