How Bottas proved he is no number two

There is no better way to prove you are not merely the young number two driver to a triple Formula 1 world champion than single-handedly defeating your quicker rivals to score your first grand prix victory, utterly obliterating your decorated team-mate in the process.

Amid an electrifying start to F1 2017, with Ferrari and Mercedes closely matched at the front, and Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel the class of the field over the first three races of the campaign, Mercedes new boy Valtteri Bottas has found himself facing difficult questions about the likelihood of having to play faithful rear gunner in a fight between two legends of modern Formula 1.

But Bottas believes he is so much more than that. In his mind, he knows he can compete with the very best in grand prix racing. He hasn't come to Mercedes to give Hamilton an easy ride and support his quest for a fourth world championship. Bottas has come here to win for himself, and win big.

But self-belief is one thing; action quite another. In the Russian Grand Prix, Bottas finally showed Formula 1 that he truly means business.

Bottas could be forgiven for having some doubts coming into the Sochi weekend. Yes, he scored his first pole position in Formula 1 last time out at Sakhir, but the race turned out disastrously as he struggled badly for speed and ended up having to give way to his faster team-mate twice.

Bahrain was ultimately the Vettel and Hamilton show again, as Bottas trailed home a distant third, more than 20 seconds shy of victory.

There was no obvious technical explanation for Bottas's woes there, beyond Mercedes' general propensity to be unkind to the Pirelli super-soft tyres. But Bottas also struggled on the preferred soft compound compared to Hamilton, and whatever he tried he couldn't get the rear end under control.

Hamilton made Bottas look a bit amateurish in the end, which was unfortunate when you consider how a self-proclaimed "amateur mistake" trying to warm his tyres behind the safety car in China cost Bottas a decent result in that race too. Instead of fighting for a podium, as he'd made a good job of first time out in Australia, Bottas trailed home sixth, behind two underpowered Red Bulls.

Coming to Russia, Bottas had shown flashes of potential, but hardly the sort of convincing form that could fully justify Mercedes' decision to replace retired world champion Nico Rosberg with an unproven driver from a midfield customer team.

At Sochi, Bottas answered his critics with a flourish of sustained brilliance. What's more, he became a grand prix winner on a weekend when Mercedes looked to be in serious trouble.

The rear tyre preservation problems that so hampered Mercedes in Australia and Bahrain, allowing Ferrari to convert a losing position into a winning one, were alleviated by the Russian venue's super-smooth track surface, which made thermal tyre degradation almost non-existent.

This dramatically reduced the chances for strategic variation in the race, but also meant Mercedes would theoretically stand a much greater chance of properly converting the qualifying advantage it enjoyed over Ferrari in the first three races.

The trouble was that qualifying advantage disappeared in Russia, as Mercedes encountered fresh difficulty trying to get the ultra-soft tyre into the ideal operating temperature range.

Mercedes trailed Ferrari by nearly seven tenths of a second after Friday practice, struggling in a similar fashion to Singapore 2015, when it couldn't get the super-soft tyre working at all.

Hamilton looked particularly lost, struggling over one lap and the long runs on both the ultra-soft and super-soft compounds. The bright spot for Mercedes was Bottas's long run pace on the ultra-soft. It took him a while, but having been urged to alter his technique to try to extract more grip from the tyre, he set a pace that looked a match for Vettel's Ferrari.

Mercedes set to work correcting its set-up for Saturday, and Bottas came close to beating the Ferrari drivers to pole position - fastest of all in Q1 and Q2, and less than a tenth away from taking top spot when it counted as well.

Conversely, Hamilton still looked all at sea at a track where he usually performs well. He kept losing control of the rear of the car through the twisty final sector of the lap, where 90-degree turns come thick and fast.

It cost him the chance to top final practice and it cost him in qualifying too. He was unusually more than half a second down come the end of Q3. If there was going to be a Mercedes in this fight, Bottas would be the one driving it.

But how to penetrate the first all-Ferrari front row since the French Grand Prix of 2008? Yes, this was the first event of 2017 where Kimi Raikkonen looked in proper form in qualifying, and he was less than six hundredths of a second short of beating Vettel to pole.

With two fast Ferraris starting ahead of him, facing the prospect of a comfortable one-stop race and minimal tyre degradation, Bottas's only real chance was to nail both at the start.

This is an aspect of Formula 1 racing where Bottas has displayed weakness in the past, often finding himself in the wrong position and shuffled back on the first laps of races during his Williams days.

This time he hooked up an excellent getaway from the second row of the grid, immediately driving past Raikkonen and taking advantage of the slipstream offered by Vettel to drive around the other Ferrari's outside. Bottas pulled ahead before the braking zone and drove into Turn 2 clearly in the lead.

"I've been working a lot on the race starts," Bottas explained. "Actually we put a lot of effort in with the team in January, February, we did so many hours analysing all of my race starts from every single year and I've learned a lot.

"The start here was OK. It was only the minimum difference compared to Sebastian. Obviously slipstreaming here is the key and how you make the approach to Turn 1 and 2. That was the key to get ahead. It would have been difficult after that to try and beat them."

Raikkonen admitted he wheelspun his own chances away with a "pretty poor" start, but Vettel's getaway was actually fine, he was just a sitting duck starting on pole and driving into a headwind on such a long run down to the first proper corner of the lap.

"There was not much I could do," said Vettel. "I think Valtteri might have had a better jump initially. It was a drag race. Obviously I didn't have a tow. There was a bit of a headwind as well, so it's another 10-15km/h off the speed that you lose with the wind blowing against you rather than from behind.

"I was hoping I could have the inside for braking. I didn't and I had to accept there was no way to fight with him into Turn 2."

From that point on the destiny of this race was clearly in Bottas's hands, but Mercedes was nervous of Ferrari's pace in race trim, and there were fears the Scuderia might still find some way to reverse positions, as it had done so successfully in Australia and Bahrain.

"The main worry for us was the beginning of the stint," confirmed Bottas. "Ferrari seemed to be quite a lot quicker on Friday with high fuel, as well as in qualifying they were able to get the tyres ready very quickly. For us it took some time, but today everything worked well.

"At the beginning of the stint, the car, the tyres felt good, and actually through all of the stint with the ultra[-soft] it was very good. We made some good progress from Friday to Sunday to get that gap - get that front end, rear end working the same way."

BOTTAS VERSUS VETTEL IN STINT ONE

Bottas produced what Vettel called an "amazing" first stint on the ultra-soft tyre, lapping a tenth per lap quicker than the Ferrari on average for 23 laps following the safety car restart on lap four. This was something else Bottas nailed to keep Vettel at arm's length from the off, after marshals had cleared the wreckage of the first-lap collision between Jolyon Palmer's Renault and Romain Grosjean's Haas that briefly neutralised the race.

But Vettel closed the gap as Bottas began negotiating traffic, and the Mercedes dived into the pits at the end of lap 27 of 52 to switch to the super-soft tyre with Bottas's advantage whittled down to a fraction over three seconds.

With new super-soft tyres fitted, Bottas was able to lap a couple of tenths quicker than Vettel, so with no chance to jump Bottas in the pits, Ferrari's hopes rested on leaving Vettel out for as long as he could maintain decent pace on his worn ultra-softs.

Vettel stayed out until the end of lap 34, which gave him a tyre-life advantage of seven laps over Bottas for the sprint to the flag on super-softs.

BOTTAS VERSUS VETTEL IN FINAL STINT

Vettel was significantly quicker than Bottas over the final portion of the race, lapping 0.241s per lap faster than the Mercedes on average. Bottas's own situation was not helped by a huge lock-up under braking for Turn 13 on lap 38. Bottas snatched both front wheels, and was lucky not to crash. He survived this flirtation with disaster, but it left him with 14 laps to run to the flag with severe flat-spots on both front tyres.

"Our metrics showed it was pretty severe damage to the tyres, which harmed his performance at the end," explained Wolff. "It was a bit of a stressful moment, but he kept it together."

Vettel smelled blood and relentlessly homed in on the leading Mercedes in the closing laps. With those severe flatspots to contend with, plus the difficulty negotiating backmarkers on such a tricky track for overtaking, could Bottas really hang on, or would he crumble - overwhelmed by the tantalising prospect of winning a grand prix for the first time after 81 starts?

"The team was asking me to go forward with the brake bias, giving advice just to help the tyre temperatures," Bottas said. "I had the flatspot so [then] I had to go rearwards. I also had a little bit of traffic during that point.

"This track, it's so special about the rhythm. If you find the rhythm then you can be so quick here and get consistent lap times, but if you lose it, it always takes a few laps to get it back.

"I kind of lost the rhythm for a bit. Once I was in free air again, able to focus on my job, I managed to get the tyre temperatures back up and pick up the pace.

"I was also asking for a bit of radio silence from the team, for me to just get on with it really, to focus on every single corner, making it every lap perfectly, and losing minimum time with the backmarkers."

Vettel finally closed to within DRS range of the Mercedes entering the final two laps, but Bottas tactically recharged his battery through the final part of lap 50 to help repel Vettel along the main straight.

On the final lap, Bottas received the benefit of DRS himself, thanks to Felipe Massa's Williams. Massa then did Bottas what Vettel called a "favour twice" by allowing Bottas through under braking for Turn 2, but not the Ferrari too.

Vettel had to slot in behind then drive around the Williams through the long flat-out left-hander at Turn 3. He eventually passed the Williams on the inside of Turn 4, but the move was tentative and Massa didn't make it obvious he would step aside.

Vettel lost six tenths in the first sector getting past Massa, and that proved enough to end the Ferrari driver's chances of a final bid for glory.

"I had 10 laps where I was flat out trying everything I could to get into the DRS zone and chase him down," said Vettel, who trailed by just 0.617s at the flag. "I just about succeeded with a couple of laps to go and in the last lap I was hoping to get closer for the back straight because we were really strong in the middle sector.

"Obviously Felipe did him a favour twice - once handing him a tow and then he cost me a bit of time. But that's how it is with backmarkers. Initially I was a bit angry, but I think Valtteri was so much in control that he had it anyway, even if I could have used the DRS on the back straight."

For Bottas this was a breakthrough result, on a track where he always excelled for Williams, qualifying on the front row in 2016 and best of the rest behind the Mercedes drivers in '14 and '15.

He finished more than 36s clear of team-mate Hamilton, who could not make the Mercedes set-up work for him in the same way, and also struggled with an overheating engine in the first part of the race, thanks to being stuck in dirty air while running a cooling configuration that was set in anticipation of slightly cooler air temperatures forecast ahead of the race.

But Hamilton was gracious enough in defeat to congratulate Bottas on a superb maiden victory in F1, one achieved in a manner that disproves what Wolff called "crazy" speculation that Bottas should play second fiddle to Hamilton's own title aspirations this season.

Bottas can now draw extra confidence from finally winning a grand prix, strengthening his own credentials as a potential title contender. It is confirmation of the steely self-belief he has always possessed that he belongs at the very front of Formula 1.

"For sure, getting the first win is something special," Bottas said. "Even though you always believe in yourself, because there's no point being here if you don't believe in your skill, actually getting the confirmation, getting the result, definitely gives me confidence that I can do it - even though I've always knew I had the ability.

"It wasn't the easiest race to win, but it feels better in a way [if] you actually need to earn it. For my first one it's very special."

And most probably the first of many.