Bottas seizes pole in Sochi, Hamilton P2 for Mercedes front row lockout; Vettel P3 for potentially fading Ferrari

Valtteri Bottas upstaged his vaunted Mercedes teammate, Lewis Hamilton, by snatching pole for the Russian Grand Prix in Saturday qualifying. At the sunny, purpose-built Sochi Autodrom on the banks of the Black Sea, Bottas just seemed to have his Silver Arrow more hooked up in qualifying than Hamilton and set a lap time good enough for the top spot on the grid. In a rare occurrence in what has been a largely dominant season for the Englishman, Bottas was .25 seconds faster than his points-leading stablemate’s P2 time. It was the second pole of the season for the Finn and led to an auspicious Mercedes front row lockout, which should enable the team braintrust to engineer some solid strategy for the opening lap to try and keep the desperate Ferraris behind them on this tough-to-pass track.

Speaking of the Scuderia, their team ace Sebastian Vettel could only muster a time good enough for P3, while his wingman Kimi Raikkonen was slightly slower and will start from P4 on the grid. Ferrari will be hoping they can somehow show better race pace, as they looked thoroughly outclassed by Mercedes in quali. Vettel will be giving it his all to vault past Hamilton and somehow try and win the race. The German contender has seen his momentum badly balked in the last 5 contests where Hamilton has sandwiched four wins around Vettel’s lone victory in Belgium. With only five races remaining after tomorrow’s Russian GP, Ferrari and Vettel really need a solid result lest they see yet another promising season end up succumbing to the might of Mercedes.

Outside the elite top 4 starters the grid was pretty well jumbled by the dreaded engine penalty hammer, something that happens with depressing regularity at this time of year under the current regulations. Most critically, the two Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo were hit with a raft of penalties for swapping out engine components and did not even run a lap in Q2. They will start from the rear with Verstappen dead last after a yellow flag violation in Q1. If the Red Bull’s non-presence made for a less than stellar qualifying spectacle it should at least be fun watching him and Ricciardo carve their way through the back markers come race day. The grid penalties opened the door for the usual mid-field runners to instead score some good starting positions for tomorrow’s race and Haas’s Kevin Magnussen made the most of that opportunity when he jumped his nearest competitors on the very last flying lap in Q3 with a time good enough for P5. That bettered his Haas teammate Romain Grosjean by a considerable margin; the Frenchman could do no better than P9. Force India were once again resurgent in qualifying, though they will have to take care not to bash into each other tomorrow as they have so often done in the past, up to and including the last race in Singapore. Esteban Ocon will start P6 and Sergio Perez P8 for the under-new-management Racing Point Force India team. Sauber’s Charles Leclerc split them with a time good enough for P7 on the grid, while his teammate Marcus Ericsson, who was demoted to a reserve role for next year in favor of Antonio Giovanazzi, made it into Q3 amidst all the other teams’ woes and qualified P10.

Top 10 qualifiers for the Russian GP:

Complete qualifying results available via Formula1.com.

Tomorrow’s race airs live starting at 7AM Eastern on ESPN2 here in the States. Hope to see you then to find out whether Bottas can get a rare win, Hamilton can keep his roll going or Ferrari and Vettel have something to spoil the Mercedes Party!