Bottas holds off Vettel in Austrian cliffhanger

Spielberg, Austria (Reuters): Valtteri Bottas won a cliffhanger Austrian Grand Prix for Mercedes on Sunday 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 orange-shirted 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 and pushed into the Dutch driver. Kvyat was given a drive-through penalty.

“We let Hamilton down,” says Mercedes F1 boss

Spielberg, Austria (Reuters): Formula One champions Mercedes have let Lewis Hamilton down but there is still everything to play for, team boss Toto Wolff said on Sunday as the Briton fell further behind in the title chase.

Hamilton started eighth in Austria, thanks to a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change, and finished fourth behind winning Finnish team mate Valtteri Bottas.

The Briton won the same race last year.

Ferrari’s championship leader Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, extended his lead from 14 to 20 points after coming a close second.

At the previous race in Azerbaijan in June, Hamilton lost what had looked a certain win from pole position after having to pit to fix a loose headrest. He finished fifth, with Vettel fourth. “In my opinion Lewis had all the bad luck that you can have,” Wolff told reporters.

“We’ve let him down with the headrest, we’ve let him down with the gearbox. Now it’s about time to fight back and hopefully that’s going to happen in Silverstone.”

Silverstone, Hamilton’s home British Grand Prix, is next weekend. “Generally, I feel that he didn’t have a great time most recently. He didn’t have a great time in the race today because he was suffering from the car and the tyres, he didn’t have a great time with the gearbox troubles and the headrest,” said Wolff.

“So it’s about time that this changes, the momentum goes in the other direction.”

Vettel and Hamilton have both won three times this season, and scored points in every race, but Hamilton has been less consistent. The triple world champion has finished off the podium four times in nine races, with a low of seventh in Monaco, while Vettel has only twice failed to make the top three - in Canada and Azerbaijan.

If he cut a somewhat dejected figure afterwards, he explained that some days felt more painful than others because of what might have been and the effort expended on damage limitation.

“Of course it’s a hit,” he said of the points lost to Vettel. “Twenty points behind is 20 points. It’s not great. But it could have been 30 today.

“I don’t think there’s a call for me to do anything else than I’m already doing,” he added. “It’s not like the team aren’t on my side or they’re not working hard or I’m not pushing them hard enough. “I just have to keep driving the way I have been and hope things get better.”