Press Information

2 November 2019

F1: Session Report

2019 United States Grand Prix – Saturday

Valtteri storms to pole at the Circuit of the Americas

 Valtteri claimed his 11th pole position in Formula One - his fifth of the 2019 season and first at
COTA
 Lewis will start tomorrow’s United States Grand Prix from P5 on the grid
 Today’s result marks the 200th Formula One front row place for Mercedes
 Both drivers will start the race on the Medium tyres

Driver Chassis No. FP3 Q1 Q2 Q3

Valtteri F1 W10 EQ 5 Laps P5 6 Laps P6 7 Laps P1

P4
Bottas Power+/04
Medium, Soft,
1:33.750 Soft 1:33.160 1:32.029
Soft Soft
Lewis F1 W10 EQ 6 Laps P2 6 Laps P4 5 Laps P5
P5
Hamilton Power+/06
Medium, Soft,
1:33.454 Soft 1:33.045 1:32.321
Soft Soft

Valtteri Bottas

This is very satisfying – it’s been a while since we’ve last been on pole, so this is a great feeling. I
was struggling with the car yesterday, but we’ve made a number of changes overnight and today the
car felt much better. I knew going into qualifying that the car had the potential to fight at the front, I
just had to get a good lap together. I’m very pleased with my first lap in Q3; it wasn’t quite perfect,
but good enough to put us on pole. It’s always an advantage to start from the front; now it’s up to me
to try and maintain the lead at the start tomorrow. Our long runs looked good yesterday, so hopefully
we can get a strong result in the race.

Lewis Hamilton

This must be one of the worst qualifying sessions I’ve had in a long time. Clearly the car had the
capability to be on the front row, I just couldn’t put the lap together. Valtteri did a great job, so
congratulations to him. Now I’ll have to try and figure out what went wrong today and how I can get
myself to the front. It’s going to be a tough challenge trying to get past two Ferraris, a Red Bull and
Valtteri, but I’ll continue to work at it and hope that I can do a better job tomorrow.
 Press Information
2 November 2019

Toto Wolff

That was an exciting qualifying session – it was very tight, with a few cars within just a few tenths.
It’s been a little while since we’ve been on pole and it’s a very good feeling to start from the front
again, we’ve all missed it. Valtteri had a strong qualifying and put in a brilliant first lap in Q3 which
was good enough to secure pole. Lewis had a trickier time, it just wasn’t his qualifying session today,
so we’ll take a look at what happened. Tomorrow looks set to be an interesting race, it appears to be
quite close between the top teams in terms of race pace. It’s still all to play for from P1 and P5 on the
grid, so we’ll give it our all and see how it plays out.

James Allison

This is our first pole since before the summer break and what a welcome pole it was – incredibly
tight, incredibly exciting and fantastic to have Valtteri put our car on the top step today. It wasn’t such
a happy session for Lewis and a bit of a surprise because he was very strong on the first two sessions.
But I think he would be the first to say that was a bit of a messy couple of laps in Q3. He’ll live to
fight another day tomorrow, we had good pace in the car in the long runs on Friday and we hope that
we can make that count tomorrow in the race.

Contacts:

Bradley Lord
Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Communications Director
blord@mercedesamgf1.com
+44 (0) 7785 682 893

Felix Siggemann
Head of Media Relations, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport
fsiggemann@mercedesamgf1.com
+44 (0) 7864 609 468

Rosa Herrero Venegas

Public Relations Manager, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport
rherrerovenegas@mercedesamgf1.com
+44 (0) 7469 353 191

To register for our press release distribution list, please use the following link:
https://www.mercedesmotorsport.com/subscribe.html
 Press Information
2 November 2019

Digital Channels & Resources:

Media Site: media.mercedesamgf1.com

Website: mercedesamgf1.com

Facebook: /MercedesAMGF1
Twitter: @MercedesAMGF1
Instagram: /MercedesAMGF1
YouTube: /MercedesAMGF1
LinkedIn: /MercedesAMGF1