Valtteri Bottas believes the 0.478s gap to Mercedes teammate and polesitter Lewis Hamilton was mainly down to struggles in the final sector of the lap.
Since the summer break, Bottas has been consistently out-performed by champion-elect Hamilton and Saturday was no different. The Finn looked solid throughout Q1 and Q2, but faltered when it mattered as he failed to extract the maximum from his Mercedes in Q3 -- ending qualifying in third, behind Hamilton and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.
"Definitely the last sector in the qualifying, I did struggle more,'' Bottas said. "It felt more tricky, for some reason than in some of the practice sessions.