Toto Wolff was pleased to see both of them Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team Drivers at the sharp end of the grid for that Portuguese Grand Prix after this Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton the first row locked out.
Qualifying wasn’t Mercedes’ strength in the first two races, but they fought brilliantly in qualifying Autódromo Internacional do Algarve First and second, with Bottas securing his seventeenth pole position in front of his team-mate.
Wolff, the boss of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, was pleased with the reaction of the team after the recent bad performances on Saturday, although he expects a close fight between them and the two Red Bull Racing Driver in the race on Sunday.
“Qualifying was always our weakness in the first two races, and now we’re back at the top,” said Wolff, who saw Bottas beat Hamilton by just 0.007 seconds ahead of pole. “We have seen Valtteri perform like this in the past and today was a mega day for him.
“But I have no doubt, as I’ve always said, he can be right up there. Tomorrow we have two Mercedes with two Red Bulls right behind them, good ingredients for a nice race! “
Botta’s’ Pole ‘a very deserved result’ – Andrew Shovlin
Andrew ShovlinThe Track Engineering Director at Mercedes congratulated Bottas on taking pole position in Portugal and praised the team for locking the front row for the seventy-fifth time since returning to Formula 1.
“Congratulations to Valtteri on his seventeenth pole position in his career. He looked solid in difficult conditions all weekend so it’s a very deserved result, ”said Shovlin.
“It is also a good result for the team to start with both cars in the front row – the seventy-fifth front row of the modern era for Mercedes F1.”
Shovlin admitted it was a tough session for the team, especially when it came to tire selection, and they went into the final runs on the middle tire in the third quarter, confident they were getting their lap times from earlier in the Session.
“It was a pretty difficult session. It wasn’t clear whether the medium or the soft tire would ultimately be the faster tire, and we also had to understand whether a preparatory lap was better than going straight on the first lap, ”said Shovlin.
“Up until the last qualifying session, nobody was nearly as good as Lewis’ time on Medium from Q2. So we decided to hedge our bets by running both compounds. The track happened to be slowing down a lot in the final minutes so tire selection wasn’t important, but we were just grateful that we’d done enough to secure the front row.
“We wanted both cars to start the race with medium tires and overall we are happy that Red Bull is on the same starting tire as we have the position on the track. Our main concern will be warming up on this site. The soft runners in the third row and behind will have a grip advantage that can take a lap or two so it can get tricky. “
Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton share the front row in Portugal – Photo credit: Wolfgang Wilhelm
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