Bottas pips Ricciardo by one thousandth of a second

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Valtteri Bottas will start this weekend's Italian Grand Prix from fifth place on the grid, after pipping Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo to the position by just one thousandth of a second during the last round of Saturday's qualifying session at Monza.

Bottas revealed that he credited a late tweak he made to his helmet for getting him that last moment extra place over the Australian.

"Before the qualifying I took like a small cooling scoop - some of my helmet - off. I said to my trainer that this is going to be [worth] one thousandth [of a second] and I think that counted today!" the Williams driver said after the session.

"It was the best lap of the weekend. To be honest the whole of qualifying must have been one of my best. I just felt very confident in the car today and the whole weekend really, so just enjoyed it."

Bottas is now aiming to get ahead of the Ferraris who will be starting immediately ahead of him on the grid and believes that a podium position is a realistic prospect on Sunday.

"It's looking promising, but you never know how much Ferrari then has in their back pocket for tomorrow but I think we can fight for the positions ahead of us," he said.

"For us as a team we've been looking pretty strong this week in the longer runs, actually been feeling more comfortable with the car with high fuel than with the low fuel."

Bottas' form in qualifying was also hailed by Rob Smedley, the team's Head of Performance Engineering.

"Valtteri was awesome. Really, really good. He maximised the car and did everything that we needed him to," beamed Smedley.

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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.