Valtteri Bottas may have taken the chequered flag at the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix, but this was no Mercedes domination.

Superficially Formula One’s long-awaited resumption looked little different from races past. Mercedes was blistering quick in qualifying, locking out the front row by more than half a second from Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, and Bottas converted pole into a flawless light-to-flag victory.

But the face-value evaluation belies how hard the reigning constructors champion had to work to get the job done.

Valtteri Bottas has survived an Austrian Grand Prix of high attrition to claim the first win of the 2020 Formula One season.

The Finn led every lap, but his race was far from easy. The grand prix featured three safety car interventions and only 11 finishers at the chequered flag, and Bottas had to manage “critical” gearbox issues that prevented him from exploiting the full performance of his car.

He also had to absorb pressure from teammate Lewis Hamilton in the middle part of the race, though the Briton’s threat faded a little past half distance after becoming afflicted with similar reliability problems.

Valtteri Bottas will lead Lewis Hamilton on an all-Mercedes front row after the Silver Arrows dominated qualifying at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Mercedes had things all its own way at Spielberg with a more than half-second advantage over Red Bull Racing, but it was Ferrari’s lack of performance that shocked most after the Italian team lost Sebastian Vettel in Q2 and Charles Leclerc qualified a lowly seventh.

The battle for pole was a private affair between Bottas and Hamilton, with the Finn taking a 0.122-second upper hand after the pair’s first laps.