F1: Valtteri Bottas on pole for Austrian Grand Prix

The mandatory sanction is a five-place penalty, which means that even if Hamilton is fastest again in Saturday’s qualifying he can not start Sunday’s race higher than sixth on the grid. “I really enjoyed driving here”.

Lewis Hamilton says it makes no sense for Mercedes to ask Austrian Grand Prix polesitter Valtteri Bottas to back-up Sebastian Vettel during the race in an attempt to help him. “It was a decent lap in the end but not quite ideal but it was good enough”.

That proved to be crucial too as the end of Q3 was nullified when Romain Grosjean stopped out on track bringing out the yellow flags.

The second attack was not, which is staged Bottas who scored his second pole position of his career.

“Congratulations to Valtteri and to Sebastian”, Hamilton said.

Mercedes said they had ruled out the possibility that the damage to Hamilton’s vehicle was done when four-time champion German Vettel of Ferrari twice drove into him during last month’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. I had no issues and the vehicle was good.

“And I even heard “don’t do anything, let them deal on the track as they wish they want to be”.

Hamilton won previous year with now-retired teammate Nico Rosberg triumphant in 2014 and 2015. “If the vehicle behind gets DRS and the slipstream, then with just one mistake and they can get the win”.

Hamilton was initially able to respond to Vettel’s time of 1:05.384, edging him out with a mark of 1:05.361.

Television images showed, however, that he and Vettel had done so unprompted after they stepped out of their cars in the pit lane.

“On the balance, we didn’t really touch the vehicle at all during qualifying, and the laps were getting better and better as a result”.

“Not quick enough, but I was very happy”, Vettel summed. “It’s a great track, the auto has been phenomenal”. “I knew about the gearbox problem on Tuesday, and it’s hard when you come from a disappointment such as we had in Baku [where he lost the race when his car’s headrest worked loose and he had to stop for a replacement] and then have a really positive mindset”.

It would be Hamilton who drew first blood as he led for most of the 90-minute session, with Max Verstappen second for Red Bull at their home circuit. There has been bad blood between the Mexican and French rookie since they collided in Baku while fighting for podium places.

Hulkenberg was only five thousandths of a second quicker than Fernando Alonso’s spec-2 engined McLaren-Honda, which failed to improve during its second run.