Austrian GP: Top 10 quotes after qualifying

Valtteri Bottas stars in Spielberg to score his second F1 pole

Polesitter Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes AMG F1, second place Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, third place Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1

Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari signs autographs for the fans

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 and Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari

Carlos Sainz Jr., Scuderia Toro Rosso STR12

Carlos Sainz Jr., Scuderia Toro Rosso STR12, corrects a slide

Cla	#	Driver	Chassis	Engine	Time	Gap	km/h
1	77	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	Mercedes	1'04.251		241.938
"What a special feeling. It's only the second pole for me and hopefully there's more to come. It was a good lap in Q3, if not quite perfect. Today was all about building up the confidence in the car. I got it set up nicely and it's great to get the second pole position of my career. I'm going to focus on my own race, rather than looking behind me tomorrow, but we will not underestimate the Ferraris. It's going to be close and should be an interesting fight. Hopefully Lewis can fight back and we can score strong points for the team. The weather could be important tomorrow but starting first, I won't complain if the rain stays away. The car feels great, especially on high fuel, and I'm ready to win. That's the only target. It's been too long since Russia."
2	5	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	Ferrari	1'04.293	0.042	241.780
“In the second run I was hoping to jump Bottas and I think I could have done better, but in the end I am pretty happy with my lap; the car is very good. Mercedes is always very quick in qualifying, but today we were close. I think it should be fine tomorrow. It will be a long race and many things can happen. The most important thing is that the car was good in qualifying. We will try to do our race and look forward. For sure it will be tough, but let’s see what we can do.”
3	7	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	Ferrari	1'04.779	0.528	239.966
“The whole weekend had been quite tricky so far and yesterday, for certain reasons, we did not have a very good day. This morning, we basically started from zero. The feeling with the car was getting better and better, but it was not easy to recover from yesterday. The qualifying session was a bit messy, with the traffic and the yellow flags. I’m not very happy overall, but considering how tricky it has been , third place is not bad. It could have been much worse. Later this evening and tomorrow morning we will go through all the different scenarios and we’ll try to pick the best one, depending on what happens in the first lap, how the weather will be and other factors.”
4	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	TAG	1'04.896	0.645	239.534
“It’s a bit tricky out there. This year the track has a lot of grip on it and that kind of makes it harder. You feel you can push more but it’s easy to go over the limit because we carry so much corner speed. We all obviously love going fast and want more and more, so we end up getting greedy and then mistakes happen, but that makes it exciting. Of course it would have been nice to finish that last lap but in the end I’m happy with the top five and we’ll move up to fourth because of Lewis’ penalty. All in all it was a pretty good session and I’m relatively happy. I believe there is a bit of rain coming tomorrow at noon so it should be interesting and not that straight forward. Lewis will try to come up the ranks as well so it will be exciting.”
5	33	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	TAG	1'04.983	0.732	239.213
“You can never predict qualifying but it was reasonable today. I hoped for a little better balance in the car but overall it was not too bad. I tried a lot of different lines at turn three and all the time I was losing the rear of the car. On my final run I was gaining time but I didn’t get DRS down the straight as Grosjean was stopped on track. You lose easily two and a half tenths on that straight if you don’t have DRS. I tried to get a little more out of the next corners but I picked up the throttle maybe a little too early at turn seven and lost the rear. Tomorrow I don’t think we are quite there in terms of speed to fight with Mercedes and Ferrari, but as we have seen a lot can happen in the race so anything is possible. If there is a bit of a mix of conditions that could be good for us and with a good strategy you never know. There is a lot of orange everywhere in the grandstands which is really nice to see, so we will try and put on a good show for everyone.”
6	8	Romain Grosjean	Haas	Ferrari	1'05.480	1.229	237.397
“We’ve been quick all weekend, Kevin and I. We’ve both been pretty happy with the car. Unfortunately, Kevin had the suspension issue in Q1, otherwise I think he would’ve been up there with us. In between Q1 and Q2 we found some performance. We had good grip in the car. I think we just lost an electric connection on the car at the end. I’m hoping it’s nothing more serious than that. It’s a long race tomorrow. It’s going to be tough on the brakes, tough on the engine and tough physically. It’s the second time this year though, after Melbourne, where I feel the tires are working well and I can really enjoy myself and push the car to the limit.”
7	11	Sergio Perez	Force India	Mercedes	1'05.605	1.354	236.945
“I’m feeling happy with our performance today. I think it was one of my best qualifying sessions when you consider how difficult things have been leading up to the session. I was P17 in second practice and P18 in final practice this morning. So to end qualifying in eighth place shows the mega steps we have taken to improve the car. It’s been a huge effort by the whole team. I was a bit unlucky with the yellow flag at the end of the session because there was an opportunity to improve my time. I’m really looking forward to this race and I think we will be even stronger in race conditions. We need to keep an eye on the weather, but wet or dry I think we can have a great race tomorrow.”
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	Mercedes	1'04.424	0.173	241.288
"It's been a frustrating day for me. I had a chance to be fastest today and I didn't quite put it all together on that final lap in Q3. I'm disappointed with my performance in Q3: it would have been great to do a better lap but it obviously wasn't meant to be. Valtteri did a fantastic job though to take pole. The gearbox issue hasn't played on my mind during the weekend but after qualifying you realise you're starting further back. I think it will be tough to make progress tomorrow. The pack is a lot closer than in 2014 when I fought up to P2. But perhaps the weather can come into play. I'll work as hard as I can to recover and try get as many points as possible. We still have great pace and the car has been fantastic here, so I know I've got the car to do the job. Let's see how it all plays out tomorrow."
9	31	Esteban Ocon	Force India	Mercedes	1'05.674	1.423	236.696
“I am not completely happy with ninth place, given all that happened in the session, but it’s still a good starting position. My fastest lap in Q3 was set on used tyres, but the yellow flags meant I couldn’t finish my attempt on fresh tyres. I feel I could have been a couple of places higher up, but it’s the way racing goes sometimes – you have to take your chances when you can. We need to review if there is something we could have done better, but I am still feeling positive about the weekend. We improved a lot since yesterday and the feeling I have with the car is much better now than it was during practice. I enjoy this track and it’s a place where you can overtake so hopefully we can bring home some good points tomorrow.”
10	55	Carlos Sainz Jr.	Toro Rosso	Renault	1'05.726	1.475	236.509
“A good qualifying! Before the weekend started, we knew this track was going to be quite tricky for us, but we found a really good set-up in FP3 that made me feel really confident with the car. As soon as the qualifying session started, we put in very competitive lap times and a P10 is a good place to start in tomorrow’s race. It’s just a shame about the yellow flags at the end of Q3 – I wasn’t able to set a time on new tyres; my Q3 lap time was done on used tyres and we’re only a tenth behind the Force India’s and Grosjean. Unfortunately we didn’t have the chance to improve, but after a tricky start to the weekend I’m happy with today’s result and I look forward to tomorrow’s race: we have a good chance of scoring points and we need to make the most out of our chances!”