Bottas calls first win 'a little bit surreal'

Valtteri Bottas admits he will take a big confidence boost from his first victory in Formula 1 after his win in the Russian Grand Prix.

Starting from third place on the grid, Bottas got ahead of the two Ferraris on the run down to Turn 1 and pulled away in the opening stint before coming under pressure from Sebastian Vettel late in the race. Eventually holding on to win by 0.6s, when asked how big the first win will be in terms of his confidence, Bottas replied: "I think a lot!

"Obviously I always knew I can do good results, if everything goes right. I always trusted my ability but it's nice to get a confirmation that this kind of results are possible – everything is possible. It's definitively good to continue from here.

"It's going to take a while [to sink in]. I have to say that I'm not normally that emotional, but hearing the Finnish national anthem is something quite special for me, so it felt good. It's a little bit surreal, obviously it's the first win, hopefully first of many!"

With Vettel closing in toward the end of the race, Bottas locked up and lost nearly two seconds at Turn 13. However, the Finn composed himself and says he was never too concerned by his advantage coming down.

"It was OK, the main thing was the lapped cars. Getting through the traffic was the main worry for me, especially at the end of the race as we definitely lose more time with these cars when following other cars. You start to lose some lap time when you're two or three seconds behind them, especially in the middle sector, in those medium-speed corners. That was quite tricky and I wasn't quite happy at times, but I always knew that Seb and Kimi [Raikkonen] would have the same problem that I was having with those guys, so, in the end, it was OK."

"I also had one lock-up, maybe 10 or 15 laps from the end, which hurt the pace a little bit, but apart from that it was OK. I did ask for a bit more of radio silence from the guys on the pit wall, just for me to get on it and focus. It was nice and quiet and that helped."