Bottas aiming to beat Raikkonen

Valtteri Bottas somewhat missed out on all the fun in Q3 on Saturday for the American Grand Prix, drifting almost four tenths back from the front three, who were only separated by a tenth.

His Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton took pole position to jump one step closer to the title, and after Sebastian Vettel’s three place grid penalty, he will be joined on the front row by Kimi Raikkonen.

Vettel was given a three place grid penalty for failing to slow sufficiently under red flag conditions in FP1, so will start fifth, jumping Bottas to P3.

There is the possibility that Mercedes could win the Constructors’ Championship this weekend, but it would take a 1-2 from them and an absolute horror show from Ferrari, but based on recent events, that’s not all too unlikely.

Bottas has revealed that his target for the race is to play the team game and get ahead of Kimi Raikkonen to secure a third 1-2 in succession for the Silver Arrows, but also mentioned that tyre strategy could come into play.

He said: “P3 is not a bad position to start from and my main focus will be to get past Kimi because we want to get the maximum number of points for the team.