The Finnish driver enters the race from the seventh grid due to starting penalties.
Alfa Romeo Valtteri Bottas drove tenth in the Formula 1 US GP qualifiers in Austin. He lost to the Ferrari that drove the fastest lap time and took the pole position For Carlos Sainz just under two seconds.
The pole position is the third of Sainz’s F1 career.
“It was fun, very challenging because of the wind gusts,” Sainz said, according to news agency AFP.
The second fastest time was driven by Sainz’s teammate Charles Leclerc, who missed Sainz’s time by 0.065 seconds. However, Leclerc’s starting number for Sunday’s race is 12th due to power unit rules.
The ones who drove ahead of Bottas too Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso suffer a five-start grid penalty, so Bottas gets to start the race from seventh place.
“Getting into the top ten was our goal. We knew it was possible with the new updates to the car,” said Bottas.
The Finn’s previous World Championship points are from the Canadian GP in June.
“Getting points for a long time is of course the main goal of the race. Hopefully we can take them more than Aston Martin”, Bottas pointed to the team chasing Alfa Romeo.
After Sainz and Leclerc, the new world champion, the driver of Red Bull, drove to the third place Max Verstappen. He was less than a second behind the fastest time.
According to Verstappen, the team founder received the information before the day’s races by Dietrich Mateschitz death cast a shadow over the day’s rides. Mateschitz, the owner of the energy drink company Red Bull, died on Saturday at the age of 78.
“This is a very difficult day. We were a bit behind in qualifying, but the race is tomorrow and we’ll try to make it his [Mateschitzin] for a year”, the world champion said.
Mateschitz also turned the energy drink company into a global sports giant. The team joined Formula One in 2005 and pretty much dominated the series from 2010 to 2013, when Sebastian Vettel took four consecutive world championships.
“He [Mateschitz] was a wonderful and unique person. He did a lot of things for people and many sports around the world,” Red Bull Team Manager Christian Horner said.
Verstappen already secured his second consecutive championship in the previous race in Japan.
#Formula #Bottas #gassed #tenth #place #qualifying #Ferraris #Sainz #pole #position
