Valtteri Bottas wins the Austrian Grand Prix
Valtteri Bottas wins the Austrian Grand Prix, the ninth round of the 2017 Formula One Championship. The Finnish driver in the #77 Mercedes concerted his second pole position to his second F1 win in a career.
Bottas has an easy job to achieve a victory at Red Bull Ring, not being challenged by anyone in the 71-lap race. He lost a lead only for a few laps when pitted on lap 42. At the end, Bottas crossed the finish line with less than a second ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo finished third, scoring his fourth podium of the season. Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen.
Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel started from the front row
At the start of the race, all the leaders started well except fifth-placed Max Verstappen. His slow reaction cost him few places and than he was a victim of an accident in Turn 1, when Daniil Kvyat hit Fernando Alonso, pushing him into Verstappen’s car. Verstappen was forced to retire for the third race in a row and fifth time in total. Alonso’s car was also too damaged to continue.
Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel, who started from the front row, retained their positions at the start. Kimi Raikkonen lost two positions and dropped from P3 to P5, losing places to Daniel Ricciardo and Romain Grosjean. Raikkonen needed few laps to return in front of Grosjean, who also lost position to Lewis Hamilton.
Second F1 win for Valtteri Bottas
Hamilton started from P8 and progressed quickly to P5, starting to chase Raikkonen after that. Not managed to overtake Raikkonen on the track, Hamilton took P4 through the pits. After that, all top 5 positions remained unchanged. In the dramatic last lap, Vettel tried to attack Bottas and Hamilton attacked Ricciardo, but there were no changes in order.
Other points scorers are Romain Grosjean, Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon, Felipe Massa and Lance Stroll.
Check the full results of the Austrian Grand Prix
After nine races, Sebastian Vettel has 171 points on his account, staying in the championship lead with 20-point gap over Lewis Hamilton. Valtteri Bottas closes his gap to teammate to just 15 points.
The next race is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 16.
Photos: formula1.com,
