Australian Daniel Ricciardo is aiming for a double points finish at the British Grand Prix, while Valterri Bottas pipped Mercedes teammate and Formula One leader Lewis Hamilton to his fifth successive pole at his home circuit.

Ricciardo, who has endured a testing season and only finished in the top ten three times with new team Renault, qualified in seventh at Silverstone on Saturday.

The West Australian driver said it was a goal just to get both his own car and teammate Nico Hulkenberg into third qualifying and he’s happy with his grid position for Sunday’s race.

“Tomorrow we need to take some points off our rivals and we’re in prime position to do that,” Ricciardo told the Renault Sport website.

“We’ll try and stay up there and put some smiles back on the team. Our car looked good on long runs so we’ll be targeting a double-points finish tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, Bottas was a mere six thousandths of a second quicker than five-times world champion Hamilton as the two Silver Arrows again locked out the front row of the grid.

Ferrari’s young Monegasque Charles Leclerc will share the second row with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who won the previous race in Austria where the two 21-year-olds clashed on track while fighting for victory in the closing laps.

The pole, in a track-record time of one minute 25.093 seconds, was Bottas’s fourth in 10 races this season — more than any other driver — and his career 10th.

“Ultimately not good enough,” said Hamilton, who was fastest in the first phase of qualifying but ran wide at Brooklands on his first lap of the final session.

“We worked really hard throughout the session but it just got a little bit away from us.”

“Fair play to Valtteri, he did the job. But it’s a long race tomorrow and we’ve got a great crowd here so hopefully I can do something different.”

Bottas is 31 points adrift of Hamilton in the championship and needs to close the gap, fully aware that his teammate has a habit of hitting full throttle once the August break is out of the way.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, last year’s race winner, was sixth and behind resurgent Red Bull driver Pierre Gasly on the third row.

Ricciardo lines up seventh, just ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris after another fine performance by the British teenager.

British-born Thai rookie Alexander Albon starts ninth for Toro Rosso with Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg 10th.