Until 2022, the Brit held a pretty impressive streak of never finishing outside the top five in qualifying in the United States.
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The 2022 edition of the Miami Grand Prix is the first of its kind and certainly promises to have its fair share of thrills and spills and record-setting and record-breaking phenomena. There was one quite interesting streak that was broken on Saturday in qualifying and it involved seven-time world champion and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. Until 2022, the Brit held a pretty impressive streak of never finishing outside the top five in qualifying in the United States. Sadly for him, that streak was broken as he could only manage sixth place on the grid, losing out only by 0.150 seconds to fifth place. The interesting thing was that the man who beat Hamilton who fifth place was none other than his former teammate and current Alfa Romeo driver Valterri Bottas.
When at Mercedes, Bottas was the number two and always had to sacrifice his position so that Hamilton could get into a better position. Of course, the Flying Finn never complained, barring some occasions, but it was undoubtedly painful. If one has watched Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, they would know how exactly Bottas felt about the whole situation at the Silver Arrows. Now at Alfa Romeo, the Finn is visibly enjoying himself as he is putting in stellar performance after stellar performance for the team. For the neutral, seeing Bottas getting one over Hamilton is definitely satisfying.
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“It is satisfying [to qualify ahead of Mercedes] I think today, especially after the day I had yesterday,” said Bottas after the qualifying session. “Once the car was there, once we found the set-up for the quali then it was up to me to get up to rhythm and deliver. I really wanted to deliver for the team because of my mistake yesterday and that makes me even more happy. It was far from an easy day yesterday, not many laps but then we had a good practice in FP3, got a clear direction with the set-up and then it was all about me finding the rhythm lap by lap. And by the end of Q3 I found the rhythm,” the Finn added.
When asked about the race on Sunday, Bottas said that it was going to be quite a challenge. “Tomorrow, I think it’s going to be a big challenge,” said Bottas. “With the tyres in this temperature, with the cars, even for drivers, I’m sweating so much the body just cannot cool down in this humidity, so it’s going to be demanding. But I think we have a good race car as we’ve had every race so far this year, so we will be fighting up there. It’s Formula 1, everything is possible, and we are not far off. I think realistically fighting with the Red Bull, Ferrari with the pace they have is tricky, but anything can happen,” he added.
