World News – CA – Lewis Hamilton defeats Valtteri Bottas to death to take pole at Portuguese GP

LEWIS: « I can’t tell you how difficult it was today! I just saw that Valtteri was leading every session, and I just dug to find the time I chose to do three laps to have a chance to beat his time « #PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ???? ¹ # F1 picTwittercom / lLhHH6ZISw

MAX: « I’m happy with P3, the lap was pretty decent We’re not too far behind The start is going to be important We’re going to feel our way into the race and see how we’re doing from there » #PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ???? ¹ # F1 picTwittercom / qQtGatCuWM

VALTTERI: « I should have ended up doing two timed laps too it would have been nice to start from the clean side, but we’ll see what we can do with P2 » #PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ???? ¹ # F1 picTwittercom / F6Ps3I0sdp

WOW! His second run on medium tires did it I pulled it out of the bag So characteristic of Hamilton, that Pole position by a tenth of a second! Bottas is going to be emptied why did he wait and do only one race? Verstappen third, Leclerc fourth

What does the second sector look like? He runs lightly in the gravel at the exit it is 0264 after two sectors Hamilton still going ?!

Can Verstappen find a tenth on the softs and upset the order? Gasly remains ninth after setting his time Hamilton has only 0040s the fastest time after two sectors. Do the tires come to him? He was the fastest in the middle sector

Hamilton is on a midrange set, however Does that suggest he’s going to do two races? Not sure A little strange but maybe the software doesn’t work very well for them Bottas is out now, on the average tire tooÂ

It’s going to be difficult to do that and be ready to go on time There are four minutes left

Can he improve? Not really, only seventh fastest, behind Sainz by a small margin The lap will probably be canceled also for a track boundary violationÂ

No sign of Ricciardo yet, I don’t know if his Renault will be repaired in time It wasn’t huge damage

Leclerc goes third, but not for long Verstappen has a poor middle sector and ranks third, 0121s out of Bottas time It’s not too shabby and gives him an outside shot at the post Plenty of time to find , however, assuming no Mercedes goes faster

Albon goes to 0888s slower and third but everyone is over four seconds slower So we wait for those

Whoa! Danny Ric does a spin at the end of Q2 He hits the rear wing on the barrier, but he comes out of the gravel, and he went into Q3 ð ?????? # PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ?? ?? ¹ # F1 picTwittercom / XQ5e3tsKKI

He loses it and rolls back It’s a pretty light impact, however, and he’s able to kick-start and continue However, he’s got to the next session, but will there be any damage?

0572s behind Russell is fine but it’s only enough for 14th, although ahead of Vettel, but for how long? Leclerc passes with the medium tires, Vettel? No 15th left

Bottas and Hamilton stay, which means Hamilton will be on tires two laps older Ocon doesn’t look like he wants to get into the top 10 here and in fact he doesn’t. Just well enough to stay 11th Verstappen on a good race

Waiting for the Kvyat end of session rush trying to get out of Q2 and he can’t

He passes second, 0358s on his teammate’s pace Not great, but that should be over with this time Albon having a bit of a difficult lap it seems He does not improve from his initial time and remains eighth

Norris, meanwhile, goes third, 0855s out of time from Bottas Verstappen can’t beat that, however Bottas on the middle tires here, everyone except Leclerc, Vettel and Hamilton on the softs

And indeed, he is practical, making the fastest middle sector Perez beats Stroll by half a second, Gasly nibbling behind him by a tenth or so Bottas beats them all but Hamilton has a bad lap, losing a lot of time in the last sector, finishing seven seconds off the pace I don’t know what happened there

He is right on Bottas by a bit The walk is the fastest at the start, with an 117626, however, a tenth ahead of KvyatÂ

Vettel out of danger, Russell has two green sectors can he get out? Of course he can! P15! He knocks Raikkonen out with a decent 1103s lap time

ð ???? « WOOO! Nice guys, that was good! » # GR63 to Q2 ð ?????? # PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ???? ¹ | #WeAreWilliams ð ?????? imageTwittercom / sHd1tfX2Fz

But I don’t think he has around the lap time to do it He remains 19th, behind Russell by almost four tenths Grosjean cannot comfortably come out either, remaining 15th and then eliminated when Raikkonen s’ improves Russell is on another flyer

Ocon only 12th, but a little over a second late I think he’ll be okay with that but it barely sets the world on fire

But it’s not a particularly good turn Russell can’t get out of the drop zone, going only 16th

Vettel is a bit disturbed here He will have to improve in his second round or he risks being eliminated

0051s ahead of Verstappen It’s close, so Although you’d expect Mercedes to hold back something

Is it a surprise? It’s not much, however, but it’s faster than the two Mercedes 0066 ahead of the Finn

And Bottas is going the fastest, with Hamilton 0050s behind Perez still up there, what can Verstappen do?

Sainz goes second, 0116s from Perez and Norris splits the Renauts Suppose it’s decent rather than good

Although few other runners from the midfield front set a time yet He is then passed by Ricciardo by two tenths How good is that lap for Perez, then?

He is so consistent, even if qualifying is not his strong point. He goes fastest with a 118040, 034s ahead of Pierre Gasly in the AlphaTauriÂ

Only Bottas, Hamilton and Verstappen are not there As you might expect and as is normal nowadays

So it looks like we are up and running shortly They surely would have updated us otherwise Well, you hope

Well, we’re only eight minutes away from that, so it seems extremely unlikely. How long, though? How long is a piece of string?

But it looks like they got a good look at the track and find more issues with the drain covers I don’t know if they did this after FP3 Maybe it should have been done before the start of the weekend, really

Repair work is underway on another loose drain cover at Turn 7 #PortugueseGP

In case you missed the FP3 This little damage to the drain caused some issues exiting turn 14 # PortugueseGP ð ???? µð ???? ¹ # F1 picTwittercom / GIaskIS3pZ

 You can’t have big chunks of drain floating around the circuit at any speed, especially not on the outside of high speed turn 14, in the last turn and the pit straight Â

This is due to damage to a vent that was caused at the end of FP3 They are working on this now, and hopefully a start can happen only 30 minutes lateÂ

Earlier this week, we posted a lengthy interview with the two-time world champion in which he spoke about his return to the F1 grid, Hamilton vs Schumacher and the Indy 500 among others Having been away for two years and seeing Hamilton win, he said it might have been a little easier for himÂ

Everything is changing in the American squad this year which means there are two vital seats up for grabs next year It’s a shame for Magnussen and Grosjean that they will probably be out of F1 at the end of the year but there is more to motorsport Maybe Formula E for Romain and Endurance for Kevin, following his father Anyway, read more about this news here

And welcome to our coverage of the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix from the Autodromo do Algarve just outside Portimao This is the first time F1 has raced in Portugal since 1996, when Jacques Villneueve won for WilliamsÂ

F1 has visited this relatively new track in the past, but only for testing purposes and the last time was so long ago that all the data the teams draw from it will mean nothing to them. the current crop of V6-turbo hybrid cars with tons of downforce

Yesterday’s practice session was quite interesting for once as the cars struggled with the low grip conditions, high winds and elevation changes It was nice to see the drivers put to the challenge and there were many and various tricks

Luckily everyone managed to keep him off the wall, although that doesn’t mean there was no drama Late in the Friday afternoon session, Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll collided in a virtually preventable incident, bringing out the second red flag of the session Verstappen blamed Stroll, who couldn’t continue It seems Verstappen assumed Stroll was on a recovery lap and would end up coming out of it outside the first cornerÂ

Verstappen had just started a hot lap and remained fully engaged Two in one does not go, as they say The stewards investigated the incident but neither driver was penalized

Because Friday’s race was so stop / start – ???? there were 30 minutes at the start of FP2 where each rider was testing the 2021 Pirelli prototype tires – we didn’t get a real reading of the running order and the gaps We have a little more idea now after the race of this morning and, surprise, surprise, Mercedes is top

Valtteri Bottas completed a training triple, with Lewis Hamilton second, 0026s behind him Max Verstappen was third, just 0132s behind the Briton It was a fairly compact field with just 14s separating third from 17th

I don’t think qualifying will be easy, so I hope for a three-way pole fight for once

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Formula 1, Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team, Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Portuguese Grand Prix, Max Verstappen