Bottas wants Austria win 'more than anyone'

Valtteri Bottas says he wants to win the Austrian Grand Prix more than any of his rivals after setting a new outright lap record to take pole position on Saturday. Bottas lead a Mercedes front-row lockout ahead of Lewis Hamilton with his first Saturday triumph of 2018.

The Finn's luck has often been out this year, he was denied victory in Baku by a last-gasp puncture and saw what appeared a likely victory in China fall the way of Daniel Ricciardo thanks to the timing of the safety car.

Bottas won this race from pole 12 months ago, his second of three wins in his maiden Mercedes campaign, but an agonising wait to get off the mark in 2018 has revved him up ahead of Sunday's Spielberg spectacular.

"The whole weekend we've been making good progress with the set-up," said Bottas.

"We've got new bits in the car this weekend, we've been working to get the car well balanced with those and finally we did and the car felt so good.

"In the last run I knew there was still one tenth or so I could improve from the first run, managed to find it and apparently I needed it.

"I just need a good, clean start, nothing amazing. No need to be a hero in Turn 1 and then go for it.

"I can guarantee I'm more hungry for a win than anyone else on the grid now I'm really going to go for it."

Hamilton was just a hundredth of a second off Bottas time and said that an error at turn three on his first flying lap in Q3 robbed him of the necessary momentum to get the better of his team-mate.

"Right at the end, I think I made a mistake on the first run," Hamilton said. "When you don't have your first lap as a banker, you kind of go from scratch on the second one. It always helps when you get a good first lap in, you can try to improve on it.

"The next one was really good, and obviously it was quite close between us which I'm happy about. Still a 1-2 for the team.

"Congratulations to Valtteri, he did a fantastic job to be on pole today. It had gone relatively well, a good weekend, pace was relatively good throughout qualifying. It was obviously very close between us all."