Mercedes
Bottas made a great start from pole, and also at the subsequent restart behind the Safety Car. But the Finn couldn’t extract the same pace from the W12 today as Hamilton and spent much of his race under pressure. Much of that pressure came from his team mate, who wound up victorious but was made to work hard for the win. First, he had to pass Verstappen, then he was made to sweat it out in the dirty air behind his team mate for lap after lap before finally squeezing past for the lead and ultimately, the win. As for the Finn, pitting a lap later than Verstappen cost him P2 and a late sensor issue prevented a sustained attack on the Dutchman in the closing stages.
The drivers and teams report back on all the action from a busy final practice and qualifying at the third race of the season, the Formula 1 Portuguese Grand Prix 2021 from Portimao.
Mercedes
A rocky opening to FP1 that saw Hamilton label the car as “undriveable” morphed into a pretty solid day in the end for the Silver Arrows. The reigning world champion struggled to get his soft tyres into a good working window in the first session, but nailed his preparation lap in FP2 to grab the top spot. As for Bottas, he looked the happier of the two in the morning before dropping back marginally as the day wore on. Top in both sessions as a team – but can they stay there tomorrow, with Red Bull hot on their heels?
Red Bull
While one of their drivers barely put a foot wrong, the other couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. Verstappen jumped into the lead with a brilliant start and pretty much stayed there untroubled throughout the whole race to record a stunning victory. But Perez dropped back at the start, was penalised for overtaking behind the Safety Car, and spun off twice. After the highs of yesterday, it wasn’t the performance the Mexican would have been hoping for.
Max Verstappen, 1st I am of course very happy with this win for everyone in the Team and Honda. I think the key was of course the start as we had a great launch. I surprised myself as it was always hard to get off the line in the wet last year but we worked hard to try and improve that and it worked. The conditions were challenging out there, especially in the beginning and it was very hard to stay on track but we stayed out of trouble.
Mercedes
That was a very solid Friday for the Silver Arrows, helped in part by reliability woes suffered by their rivals. Bottas finished on top in both sessions, despite failing to improve on the soft tyres in FP2. Hamilton was narrowly behind his team mate, but both look comfortable here, citing the balance of the W12 as being much improved since Bahrain. But can they convert this form to front row grid slots tomorrow?
Lewis Hamilton – FP1: 1:16.605, P2; FP2: 1:15.561, P2 The team worked very hard to understand what happened in the last race where we were weak and to see if we can try to tweak the car for a better set up. I also think the track has come a little bit more in our direction. We started off with a really good set up today, a few tweaks here and there but no major issues. So far, good pace from us this weekend.