Valtteri Bottas completed a hat-trick of Formula 1 pole positions, blowing the rest of the field away in qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix Saturday and laying his championship ambitions out on the table.
Qualifying is a session about small margins and, when your teammate is the pole record holder as is Bottas’ situation with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, the margins are yet finer still. On this day in history, however, Bottas threw out all of the conventions and smashed Hamilton by more than six-tenths of a second. So great was the advantage that only Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen could lap within a second of the Finn.
Dominating every session except for Saturday morning practice, where he had an early spin, Bottas has been the driver to beat all weekend, culminating in a lap of 1:15.406 seconds, a new track record.
“I really enjoyed that,” said Bottas. “I enjoy the adrenaline rush you get from those laps. I’m very pleased. Practice three was difficult, obviously, with the spin, so I just forgot that and moved on. It’s started well the season, the way I hoped for and I’m feeling better and better in the car, so I look forward to tomorrow.”
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