Valtteri Bottas is on pole for Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. This is his 15th pole position of F1 career – and his fourth of the season. Bottas beat Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton by 0.097s in the final run of Q3, The Fin revealed that his final Q3 effort at Imola had definitely got his adrenaline pumping.
Mercedes are 13-0 so far in this year’s qualifying and the silver arrows were in a class of their own at the historic Italian track, with Max Verstappen unable to get within half a second of the silver cars(0.567 sec), but fortunate to get to Q3 at all after encountering a power issue in Q2.
Pierre Gasly let the World know, why AlphaTauri’s retain him for 2021 with a P4 in Qualifying and the Frenchman equaled his career best start. Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo comes home in P5, his fourth top-five start this season, ahead of Red Bull’s Alexander Albon who seemed to be unhappy with the car, the Thai driver is 0.4s adrift of team mate Verstappen.
Ferrari Man Charles Leclerc couldn’t repeat his heroics of the last couple of races, but he qualified seventh ahead of Russian Daniil Kvyat in P8, who is making a rare appearance in Q3 for AlphaTauri. The McLaren duo completes the top-10, with Lando Norris edging ahead of team mate Carlos Sainz for only the second time in the last eight races to reach Q3.
Q1 – Bottas leads the way as Russell stars again
Bottas found himself in the unusual position of being in the drop zone in Q1 with three minutes to go after a scrappy opening run, forcing him to box for fresh rubber and going again.
He made no mistake this time, the Finn going quickest, 0.008s ahead of Hamilton, with Verstappen in his customary position of third, albeit 0.8s off the pace. Albon was under pressure, too, but leapt out of the bottom five to comfortably inside the top 10, with Russel reaching Q2 for the eighth time in 12 races.
Renault left it late with both cars to do their laps, particularly Daniel Ricciardo, but both the Australian and team mate Esteban Ocon cruised through as the track got quicker as the session went on. But there was tension for Lance Stroll. The Racing Point driver was on the bubble, and then got bumped into the drop zone at the death, only to be promoted when Kimi Raikkonen’s lap got deleted for exceeding track limits.
The Finn will start 18th, behind the Haas duo of Grosjean and Magnussen – the latter running wide across the gravel on his last run – with Nicholas Latifi and Antonio Giovinazzi also out. This was only the second time Giovinazzi, who has been retained for next season, has been slowest of all in qualifying this year – the other occasion being the Spanish Grand Prix.
Knocked out: Grosjean, Magnussen, Raikkonen, Latifi and Giovinazzi
Q2 – Verstappen survives Engine scary & Vettel drops out once again
There was high drama in Q2 when Verstappen sounded frantic on team radio as he warned his team he had a power issue. The Dutchman recovered to the pits and was then forced to wait as Red Bull removed bodywork and investigated the issue.
With just a few minutes to go, Verstappen got back out and pumped in a lap under pressure that was easily good enough to get into Q3 – and on the medium compound tyres to boot.
Only the Mercedes duo also managed to get through on the mediums, as Bottas led Hamilton in a one-two again.
Gasly was the star of the session though, going third fastest on the soft tyres, less than a tenth of a second behind the Mercedes, with AlphaTauri team mate Daniil Kvyat also progressing for only the second time in the last 28 races.
It was incredibly close in the midfield, with just a tenth of a second separating Ricciardo in fifth and Sergio Perez in 11th, the Racing Point driver failing to reach Q3 for the first time this year in dry conditions.
He was joined by Esteban Ocon, outqualified by Ricciardo for he 11th consecutive race, Russell, Vettel – who failed to reach Q3 for a ninth consecutive race – and Stroll in getting knocked out.
Knocked out: Perez, Ocon, Vettel, Russell, Stroll
