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Australian Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo will start from fifth after Sebastian Vettel stormed to pole position for the Russian Grand Prix.
Vettel, the Formula One leader, shaved 0.059 seconds off his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen’s leading time, claiming his first pole since September 2015 in 1:33.194.
His former teammate Ricciardo said this week he wanted to make the championship a ‘three-horse race’ with Ferrari and Mercedes. The Perth-born 27-year-old did his best to do that and was the fastest home outside the two powerhouses, albeit almost two seconds off the pace.
“If you have the rhythm here, it feels fantastic,” Vettel said after ending a run of 18 poles for Mercedes.
The German will be looking to claim his third win of the season on Sunday and extend his seven-point standings lead over Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.
Raikkonen said he was “happier than the previous qualifyings,” despite missing out by a whisker on what would have been his first pole for nine years.
The Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton qualified third and fourth respectively after failing to dislodge Vettel with their last-lap efforts.
The Sochi track has previously suited Mercedes, which had been looking to strike back at Ferrari after Vettel won the last race in Bahrain.
“Going into this weekend, we were thinking it’s probably going to be better than Bahrain,” Bottas said. “For sure, definitely it’s disappointing for us not to be on pole.”
Still, Bottas suggested he and Hamilton could ambush the Ferraris at the first corner on Sunday.
“Second-row start here is not that bad a thing. It’s a pretty long run into turn one,” he said.
Vettel suggested on Friday that Mercedes was concealing its true pace after Ferrari led the time charts in practice. Despite failing to make the front row, Bottas and Hamilton did close the gap to Ferrari – with Bottas just .095 off Vettel’s time.
Vettel’s pole sets the stage for a much more competitive Russian race than any of the previous editions, which were all battles within the dominant Mercedes team.
The driver on pole has won two of the three Russian F1 races so far, the exception being in 2015 when Nico Rosberg retired with a throttle problem, handing victory to Hamilton.
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