Valtteri Bottas is targeting the Formula One world championship after securing his first win at the Russian Grand Prix on Sunday. The Finn held off a determined push from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to take victory, with his Mercedes team‑mate Lewis Hamilton finishing fourth.
Bottas’s win at Sochi came in his 81st start and ensured the 27-year-old is very much in the championship fight. Vettel, on 86 points, leads Hamilton by 13 but Bottas is only 10 behind his team-mate on 63. While discussion before Russia centered on whether team orders would be imposed to favour Hamilton, the win has only strengthened Bottas’s resolve to pursue the title.
He was congratulated by Hamilton, Vettel and the German’s Ferrari team‑mate Kimi Raikkonen after the victory but, while relations between the Mercedes drivers are still friendly, he does not envision any quarter being given while racing. “It’s going to be a long year, with a lot of fighting,” he said. “At some point it might get a bit more tricky and tight. If and when it comes to the championship fight, there might be less talking and more fighting on track.”
Bottas had a mixed start to the season, having been recruited by Mercedes from Williams in January to replace the world champion, Nico Rosberg, who retired after winning the title last year. The Finn was third in Australia, sixth in China and third in Bahrain in the opening three meetings. A spin behind the safety car in Shanghai raised questions about his ability to step up and, after a tyre pressure issue in Bahrain, he was given instructions to let Hamilton past, prompting the team orders debate. However, he did claim pole at Sakhir and followed it by comprehensively out-qualifying Hamilton in Russia. The subsequent win gives him further impetus to achieve more, he believes.
“If you don’t think you can win, you should stay at home,” he said. “But to get confirmation, to get that first result, that matters. The races you win and the times you are on the podium is the name of the game. Getting that first win gives you a lot of confidence that you can do it, even though I always knew I had the ability. Now I just want to do it again. It’s not going to be that simple this year, it’s going to be a massive fight.”
Hamilton had an uncharacteristically poor weekend, unable to find the right setup for his car at the Sochi Autodrom. He struggled to bring the tyres into their temperature operating window in practice, could not find the balance in qualifying and suffered from engine overheating in the race. The high temperatures were causing one of his cylinders to cut out and he believed he was losing at least 0.7 seconds a lap.
The three-times world champion, who endured mechanical failures last year when he lost the title to Rosberg, did not believe his Sochi result was caused by any fundamental problem with the car. “This weekend was not [about] reliability. It was pure pace on the car – the tyres, tyre temperatures, being comfortable in the car. There is no reason for me to have any worry of reliability because we have the strongest reliability so far.”
His problems were exacerbated by Bottas, who had tuned his car to perfection over the weekend . The team’s executive director, Toto Wolff, has already confirmed Mercedes will investigate what was causing Hamilton’s difficulties. The British driver said: “I can’t explain it right now but I will do some work over this week to fully understand it. I have some theories about how it felt in the race and qualifying, some ideas, but lots of work will be done to figure it out.”
The relationship between Rosberg and Hamilton became increasingly fractious last season and Mercedes have admitted it was detrimental to the team. However, despite the bullish talk from Bottas, Wolff remains confident the two drivers, whom he has described before as having no baggage with one another, will remain friendly. “The relationship between the two is very intact,” he said.
“Lewis was one of the first to congratulate Valtteri. Nevertheless they are fierce competitors and want to win races and fight for the championship. But I don’t think it will affect the relationship and dynamics between the team like it did over the last few years between Nico and Lewis. That was a completely different relationship.”
