Mercedes: 'We are happy that Red Bull has chosen to do that!'

Although Red Bull Racing is finally equivalent or maybe even slightly faster than Mercedes this year, the team secured their first 1-2 of the year in qualifying. According to Andrew Shovlin, it however wasn't an easy session.

On the Portimao circuit, there was a strong wind today, which made it difficult for the drivers to drive consistent laps. This was reflected in the varying lap times throughout the qualifying session.

In the end, it was Valtteri Bottas who prevailed, with Lewis Hamilton in second place. "Valtteri has looked strong in challenging conditions all weekend, so it's a well-deserved result. It's also a strong result for the team to be on the front row of the grid with both cars, the 75th front row for Mercedes in the modern era," Andrew Shovlin told Mercedes' Team Review.

Remarkable choice of Mercedes

While Max Verstappen hadn't set a time until his final run in Q3, Mercedes remarkably chose to send Hamilton and Bottas out on medium tyres for the second run. "No one had come close to matching Lewis's time on medium from Q2 so we decided to hedge our bets by running both compounds. As it happened, the track got much slower in the final minutes so tyre choice wasn't important."

Mercedes will therefore start the race on the medium tyres, but so will Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who will start from P3 and P4 respectively. On the contrary, Shovlin is happy with that. "We're happy to have Red Bull on the same start-tyre given that we have track position. Our main concern will be the warm-up on that compound, the soft runners on the third row and behind will have a grip advantage that could last a lap or two so that may might things tricky," concludes Shovlin.