“It’s not far off the sweet spot” – Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri Bottas began the first-ever Qatar Grand Prix in perfect fashion, ending the opening day top of the timesheets, with team-mate Lewis Hamilton in fourth after a difficult day in Qatar.

It was a strong opening day in the desert for Bottas, the Finnish driver was third at the Losail International Circuit after the opening session of the day, before flying to the top of timesheet in Free Practice Two. The second practice session took place at the same time in which both Qualifying and the Race will be taking place, under the floodlights.

This puts Bottas in a good position going into the important part of the weekend, where he seems to have his Mercedes set-up almost perfectly for race conditions. The Finnish driver is happy with how his weekend has started.

“We’ve started the weekend pretty well with the set-up. The balance felt good, so I only made a few minor tweaks for FP2. That’s an encouraging way to start the weekend at a new track, the team did a really good job with their pre-weekend preparations.

“It’s not far off the sweet spot, obviously there’s always work to do and improvements to find and even with driving, you can’t find all the speed available in just two sessions. We’ll keep on working. It’s hard to draw conclusions from today, practice is practice, but the feeling is okay and that’s promising for the rest of the weekend.”

“I’m definitely a bit off” – Lewis Hamilton

For World Champion Lewis Hamilton it was a more difficult opening day, the British driver sat out some of the opening practice session with a technical fault with his car. Hamilton could be seen running wide multiple times, with the kerbs at the Losail International Circuit causing havoc for the underbodies of numerous cars on the opening day.

He still managed to complete a good number of laps though and has plenty of data to look at over night, Hamilton is looking to make progress on Saturday.

“It was a tricky day for me, I don’t know exactly how big the gap is, but I’m definitely a bit off the benchmark. This is a new track, it felt okay to drive, quite nice and no real issues, but it’s all high-speed corners so it’s quite physical. We have some speed to find but we completed plenty of laps, so that’s encouraging, and it gives us plenty of data to look into tonight. We’ll see what progress we can make tomorrow.”

2021 Qatar Grand Prix, Friday – LAT Images