Valtteri Bottas has continued his good start to the season in Shanghai. He will start from the 10th grid slot later today as he made Q3, with teammate Zhou Guanyu failing to advance from Q1. The former Mercedes is now 5-0 up in Grand Prix qualifying against his stablemate.
It was clear from the first segment of qualifying that Bottas was a Q3 contender as he ran inside the top 10 on both runs for every driver, placing P6 at the end of it. He was 0.335s quicker than his teammate as 10 places separated them.
A last gasp attempt saw him knock out Lance Stroll by 0.069s in Q2, staying in 10th in Q3 as he finished 0.061s behind Nico Hulkenberg.
The 34-year-old was feeling positive about the whole weekend. Despite having only one practice session, he’s had a good rhythm and shown nice speed.
“I think we just started the weekend on the right foot. There was only one practice, which was not easy for anybody.
“But yeah, just managed to find the rhythm pretty quickly and built from there. Perhaps the car is also, for some reason, quite suited for this track.
“But yeah, also from my side it was quite a smooth session. I could get a good feeling, good rhythm from lap one, and then I could build on that, which is nice.”
In the final few minutes of Q2, Ferrari’s Sainz put wheels in the gravel on the exit of the final turn and crashed which triggered a red flag. But he managed to fix his damage and Q2 was once again given the green light.
As all drivers started to put in their best laps to make it through to Q3, Bottas was able to push Stroll out and clinch the final spot — it’s his first Q3 appearance of 2024.
Bottas stated he needs to overtake the Haas at the start since it’s got a good top speed advantage compared to the Sauber.
The Finnish driver got been stuck behind Magnussen in Japan and that repeated itself in the Sprint on Saturday.
“Top speed of Haas [could be the main obstacle to points]. It seems to be. In the Sprint, I was stuck behind Kevin. In the last event I was stuck behind him most of the race, so we need to try and get them off the line.
“They’ve got a pretty clear top speed advantage. And pit stops we’ve been working hard on, and I’m trusting it’ll be better in a better place with that.”
Bottas was very optimistic about the team’s progress over the weekend and hopes to have a point-scoring race.
“We’ve made progress. We’ve been really close to Q3 in the last two events, but now we’ve just got things right.
“So yeah, getting there, but it is close.”
