Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) won the Italian Grand Prix qualifying session this Friday and will therefore start from pole position in the sprint qualifying on Saturday, which will determine the starting grid on Sunday. The Finn beat the two championship monsters, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
He will start last in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sunday, due to the change of several elements of his engine for the fourth time this season, but that does not prevent Valtteri Bottas from giving everything! The Finnish driver won this Friday’s qualifying session, which consisted of a Q1, Q2 and Q3, but which will not define the starting grid of the race, but the starting grid of the sprint qualifying on Saturday, which will consist of one hour of racing (18 laps) to determine the final starting grid and which will award points to the first three. Bottas, who was told this week that he would be leaving Mercedes for Alfa Romeo this winter, was 96 thousandths ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who tried to take his aspiration in Q3, and by 411 thousandths Max Verstappen (Red Bull) . Unsurprisingly, the Silver Arrows appear to be faster than the Austrian team on the Monza circuit, and Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, only finished ninth.
Take a bow, @ValtteriBottas 👏#ItalianGP 🇮🇹 # F1 pic.twitter.com/K8CHDfYUqv
– Formula 1 (@ F1) September 10, 2021
The Alpine retreating
Behind the leading trio, we find the McLarens of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, then the AlphaTauri of the defending champion, Pierre Gasly, and the two Ferraris of Carlos Sainz Jr and Charles Leclerc, the winner of 2019. The Aston Martins and on the other hand, the Alpine did not manage to cross Q2. No real surprises were to be reported during this session, each team and each driver finishing more or less in their place. Note, however, the traffic jams in the pits, when all the drivers wanted to exit at the same time at the end of Q2, which could have created one or more accidents., or traffic in Q1 which could also have caused damage. Perhaps a point of regulation to be reviewed before the third Grand Prix (in a country which remains to be defined) where a qualifying session will take place on Friday …
The line up for Saturday’s #F1Sprint 👀 #ItalianGP 🇮🇹 # F1 pic.twitter.com/dKIjtG0oYo
– Formula 1 (@ F1) September 10, 2021
