Valtteri Bottas wasn't particularly pleased with his Chinese Grand Prix pole position lap, describing it as "OK", and was relieved it was good enough to secure him the top spot.
The Mercedes driver beat team-mate Lewis Hamilton to the top spot by just +0.023s to claim his first pole position of the 2019 season, but admitted he struggled during the final qualifying session despite feeling in a strong position during final practice on Saturday.
"It's been a good weekend so far for me…starting from pole position. I felt already really confident this morning, in FP3. In qualifying, I honestly struggled a bit in Q3 to get the perfect lap, but it was good enough.
"The lap was OK, like I said, not completely how I wanted. Luckily it was good enough for pole.
"I think in Q3, honestly, in those two runs I never got the perfect lap, there was always something, but that’s how it goes. The pace was good, and it was enough for pole.
"The car has been really good this weekend, Lewis also managed to improve a lot during the qualifying and it was super close.
"The weekend, so far, has been very good. Obviously tomorrow is the big day but at least on single lap performance it’s been competitive. As a team we’ve been super strong."
Bottas ran the Soft tyre in Q2 but failed to improve on his previous lap, set on the Medium compound, and believes the latter will be the optimum race tyre.
"The thing here is that the Soft tyre, on a very high-speed track, there are long corners that put a lot of load on the tyres, so the Soft degrades more during the lap, even in just one lap.
"So the Soft might be a lot quick at the beginning of the lap but by the middle of the lap it’s already slower. That’s why there’s not a massive time difference between the two.
"I think tomorrow, as normal, the Mediums will be a better tyre after a few laps. That’s usually the case, but that’s something we’ll find tomorrow."
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