Bottas coverts momentum into dominant pole at Barcelona, outperforms Hamilton in P2; Vettel P3 for Ferrari
Valtteri Bottas carried the momentum of his redemptive victory in Azerbaijan two weeks ago and converted it into a dominant pole at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain in Saturday qualifying. The ostensible Number 2 at Mercedes once again bettered his 5-time World Champion teammate Lewis Hamilton to secure his third pole position in a row and enhanced his case to be taken seriously as genuine threat for this year’s title. Hamilton did qualify in P2 but the Englishman was was a full 6-tenths behind his budding Finnish rival. Sebastian Vettel was once again the third fastest car on the track, as Ferrari find themselves unable to close down Mercedes’ superior pace despite all the pre-season hype. His talented teammate Charles Leclerc had a bit of ragged Q3 and only set the fifth fastest time.
That saw Red Bull’s Max Verstappen split the two Prancing Horses to to take P4 on the grid. Once again the Dutch wunderkind easily bested his junior Red Bull teammate Pierre Gasly, who could do no better than a P6 time. The two Haas F1 cars had their best quali session of the season showing solid speed at this most familiar of tracks, which all the teams use for preseason testing; Romain Grosjean got a much-needed confidence boost by pipping his teammate Kevin Magnussen P7 to P8. The Haas team desperately need a good result come Sunday after a rocky start to the 2019 campaign and at the very least their car looks nicely hooked up on the Barcelona circuit and should be quite competitive.
Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat did very well to score a P9 start but the Russian also needs to bring the car safely home in that points and avoid his usual unfortunate tendency to be reckless in the race. Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo was the last of the top 10 qualifiers but he was assessed a 3-spot grid penalty after backing into Kvyat in Azerbaijan so McLaren’s Lando Norris will be promoted to start P10 tomorrow.
Top 10 qualifiers for the Spanish GP:
| POS | DRIVER | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:16.979 | 1:15.924 | 1:15.406 | |
| 2 | 1:17.292 | 1:16.038 | 1:16.040 | |
| 3 | 1:17.425 | 1:16.667 | 1:16.272 | |
| 4 | 1:17.244 | 1:16.726 | 1:16.357 | |
| 5 | 1:17.388 | 1:16.714 | 1:16.588 | |
| 6 | 1:17.862 | 1:16.932 | 1:16.708 | |
| 7 | 1:18.042 | 1:17.066 | 1:16.911 | |
| 8 | 1:17.669 | 1:17.272 | 1:16.922 | |
| 9 | 1:17.914 | 1:17.243 | 1:17.573 | |
| 10 | 1:18.385 | 1:17.299 | 1:18.106 |
Complete qualifying results available via Formula1.com.
Tomorrow’s Spanish GP airs live starting at 9AM Eastern on ESPN2 here in the States. Hope to see you then to see how it all shakes out!