Valtteri Bottas accepted that Mercedes did not fully maximise the tyres during qualifying in China, but says it does not fully explain the squad’s sizeable deficit to Ferrari.
Mercedes was unable to challenge Ferrari during the Q3 shootout at Shanghai as Sebastian Vettel beat Kimi Raikkonen to pole, with third-placed Bottas over half a second adrift.
When asked whether the gap came as a surprise to Mercedes, which had taken pole position at the venue for the last six years, Bottas said: “Yeah, we are.
“We thought coming into today that we would be fighting for the pole position but it was definitely out of reach today, there was nothing in the lap that we could have gained that much.
“I think there’s a little bit in terms of getting the tyres absolutely perfect for the lap – but it’s not half a second. You could feel it if it would be that big.
“I think they have a really strong car. We can see it, especially in long corners, Turn 1 and 2, they make some good gains to us and obviously not without any speed difference on the straights, they can keep the gains they make in the corners.”
Bottas remains optimistic that Mercedes can take the fight to Ferrari in race trim, with warmer conditions expected.
Mercedes opted to run the Soft tyres in Q2 – the compound on which both drivers will start, as opposed to the Ultrasofts – but that was a strategy mirrored by Ferrari.
“From our numbers, it’s going to be very close between us and Ferrari – but as they were quicker today, we don’t know,” Bottas said on Mercedes’ race prospects.
“But we will for sure try with everything we can.
“Obviously, we start on similar tyres so there’s not going to be massive differences with the strategies but yeah, we need to try and take the opportunities.”
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