Bottas is F1’s quiet title contender

SPIELBERG, Austria: Whisper it quietly, but Valtteri Bottas is increasingly looking like a Formula One title contender after the Mercedes driver kept his cool to win Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix from pole position.

The unassuming Finn will never be a man to beat his chest and bellow his challenge from the rooftops but, in a typically understated way, he left no doubt that his hat was with the others in the ring.

In fact, Bottas maintained it had always been there.

“Since the day I signed with Mercedes, what else can you put as a target?,” he said.

“It’s always been the target but I don’t want to shout about it too much.”

With his second win in nine

I don’t want to think about it too much because we’re not even halfway and it doesn’t help anything to start thinking about it.

races, since joining the champions from Williams in January as replacement for retired 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg, Bottas closed the gap to team mate Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s leader Sebastian Vettel.

Hami lton, the triple world champion who started the season as established favourite and is second overall, is now closer to Bottas - the gap is only 15 points - than he is to Vettel (20).

“I don’t want to think about it too much because we’re not even hal fway and it doesn’t help anything to start thinking about it,” Bottas said of the championship.

“By making a thing about winning the title, it doesn’t change anything. You need to go race by race, session by session, lap by lap. But I know as a fact...with the points, I’m still in the fight.”

Hamilton, who has won three races this year and suf fered setbacks with a loose headrest robbing him of victor y in Azerbaijan and a gearbox problem dropping him f ive places on Sunday’s grid, could only agree.

“There was never a point when he wasn’t in the fight,” he told reporters. — AFP

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes driver