Valtteri Bottas hails dominant victory as "one of the best of my life"

Bottas, Mercedes, Turkey — Photo: © LAT Images

Turkish Grand Prix

Bottas hails dominant victory as "one of the best of my life"

Bottas controlled the Turkish Grand Prix for his first win of the year

Ewan Gale

Sunday 10 October 2021 15:54

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Valtteri Bottas has hailed his dominant Turkish Grand Prix victory as "one of the best races of my life".

The Finnish driver finished 14.5 seconds ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen in treacherously damp conditions at Istanbul Park.

The only nine laps Bottas did not lead were when Charles Leclerc and Ferrari gambled on extending their pit stop strategy before being overhauled by the Mercedes driver.

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The victory was Bottas' first of the season and first since the Russian Grand Prix last year and he said: "It has been a while but it feels good.

"From my side, probably one of the best races of my life, ever. Apart from that one little slide, everything was under control.

"The car has been really good in every condition, I had really good confidence with it and could really control it. It is not easy to choose the strategy here with these conditions and when to stop but I am glad it went smooth for once for me."

Explaining the difficulty of the conditions in Turkey, where the track never dried fully yet the intermediates were balding, Bottas added: "When there is only one drying line, it doesn't need much for you to go off so definitely needed to focus all through the race.

"A difficult one and yeah, it feels like a well earned victory."

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