Bottas holds off fast-closing Vettel
VALTTERI BOTTAS won a cliffhanger Austrian Grand Prix for Mercedes yesterday with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel finishing a mere 0.6 of a second behind to increase his lead over Lewis Hamilton to 20 points after nine races.
Hamilton, Bottas’s team-mate, started in eighth place after a grid penalty triggered by an unscheduled gearbox change and finished fourth.
Vettel now has 171 points to Hamilton’s 151. Bottas is third overall on 136.
“I had a bit of deja-vu in the end from Russia,” said Bottas, referring to his first Formula One win at Sochi in April, when Vettel again almost reeled him in at the finish and also crossed the line 0.6 behind.
“At the beginning I could control the race but it was trickier towards the end.”
Australian Daniel Ricciardo finished third for Red Bull, at a circuit owned by the energy drink brand, for his fifth successive podium finish, with Hamilton pushing him hard to the chequered flag.
The victory from pole position was the second of the season and of his career for Bottas, who joined Mercedes in January as a replacement for retired 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg.
Apart from the closing laps, with Vettel reeling in the Mercedes in a nail-biting finish and Bottas looking anxiously in his mirrors as he wrestled with blistered tyres, the Finn’s biggest scare came at the start.
Bottas reacted with split-second precision, his getaway so blindingly quick that Vettel alongside immediately questioned whether the Mercedes had jumped the lights. Stewards investigated and took no further action.
“I think that was the start of my life. I was really on it today,” he said.
“I was pretty sure he jumped it,” said Vettel, who felt he would have won with one more lap.
“How would you feel if you were just shy of half a second behind the winner? It was very close.”
As Bottas led away, bits of bodywork went flying behind him in a three-car coming together that drew a groan from some 10–000 orangeshirted Dutch fans around the circuit as Ricciardo’s teenage team mate Max Verstappen was shunted off.
It was the 19-year-old Dutch driver’s fifth retirement of the season.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished fifth with Frenchman Romain Grosjean sixth for Haas and Force India drivers Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon following behind.
The Williams pairing of Felipe Massa and Lance Stroll completed the points places after starting 17th and 18th.
McLaren’s Fernando Alonso joined Verstappen in retiring without completing a lap, the Spaniard hit from behind by Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat. Kvyat was given a drive-through penalty. A NEW Footballer of the Season will be crowned tonight at the Premier Soccer League awards ceremony, and the general feeling is that the accolade is not as closely contested as this time last year, when Khama Billiat was pronounced the best player.
Then, the public, media and pundits felt either Billiat or his Mamelodi Sundowns teammates Hlompho Kekana or Keagan Dolly would have been worthy winners. Tonight, striker and Cape Town City captain Lebogang Manyama, is the hot favourite.
It is not that Thulani Hlatshwayo and Kekana have not been outstanding during the 2016/17 campaign, but rather that Manyama was perhaps a different class, helping City emerge as surprise title contenders and eventually finish third behind Wits and Sundowns.
Manyama, 26, incredibly featured in all but one league match for the Mother City outfit and scored 13 goals, which automatically guarantees him the Golden Boot. His performance also helped him return to the national team and he featured as a second half substitute in Bafana Bafana’s historic 2-0 win over Nigeria last month.
But this is not to say Wits’ Hlatshwayo would not have earned the Footballer of the Year tag should he win. ‘Tyson’, a defender and recently appointed Bafana skipper, was arguably the best player in a team that hardly relies on individuals to get the job done, staying injury-free throughout most of the season and managing to play in 24 of the 30 league games and scoring three very important goals.
The same goes for Kekana, whose schedule at Sundowns with their continental commitment means he’s played more football than his fellow nominees over the past year, but still featured in over 80 percent of his club’s league matches, scoring five goals – often stunners.
The release of the nominees for the PSL awards has not been without some controversy though, especially the Young Player of the Season category. Motjeka Madisha (Sundowns), Phakamani Mahlambi (Wits) and Nduduzo Sibiya (Golden Arrows) are the three who got the nod for the nomination, but it appears the criteria was a bit lax for this category, with the PSL deciding the young players have to have only played in 40 percent of their teams’ league matches. How rising star and Under-20 World Cup participant Grant Margeman missed out is still a bit of a mystery. Aubrey Modiba, the winner of this award last year, has also been ignored. Modiba played in 24 of SuperSport United’s 30 league games, netting one goal as he helped them to a fifth place finish.