Bottas feels Red Bull made big step: 'Clearly the fastest on Saturday'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
For Valtteri Bottas, the American Grand Prix will be a challenge. He qualified fourth, but a five-place grid penalty will move him down to ninth, meaning he will have to start behind Pierre Gasly, both McLarens and both Ferraris. A difficult task expects the Finn.
"They are not easy cars to overtake, that's for sure. Based on what I've felt this weekend, I expect it's going to be a two-stopper. So we will have at least two chances with the strategy and who knows, maybe we will have more chances," explained the Mercedes driver at Motorsport.com.
Red Bull simply faster in Austin
The Finn will have his sixth ICE installed this weekend, which will give him a grid penalty of five places. Normally you can use three ICEs in a season. With the first new ICE, each driver receives a grid penalty of ten places and each subsequent time a driver receives a new ICE, a grid penalty of five places suffices. As a result, Bottas will start from P9 in Austin.
"Of course you try to qualify as high as possible. The problem for me was just that my second run in Q3 was quite messy in the last sector. I blocked my front wheels and just lost a lot of time. I think Red Bull has made a bigger step with performance and they were clearly the fastest on Saturday. I think the race speed will be pretty similar," Bottas concluded hopefully.