Valtteri Bottas thinks he extracted the maximum out of his Williams after beating the Ferraris to third on the grid for the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi.
Williams looked strong in a shortened FP3 session on Saturday morning and, after a slow start in Q1, carried that pace over into qualifying. Although team-mate Felipe Massa failed to make it into the top ten shootout after being caught out by traffic, Bottas managed to edge out Sebastian Vettel by just 0.05s.
Asked if Williams has the measure on Ferrari in Sochi, he replied: "It seems like it, at least today. We were quite competitive and it's a good to be third, it's a good place to start here. It's been a tricky weekend for everyone but we really managed to use practice three well, at least the part we had, and managed to get some good laps in qualifying consistently. Pleased with the laps and what we did as a team."
Bottas is happy with how Williams utilised the minimal practice time to qualify on the second row.
"We really saw last year that it's quite tricky to get tyres to work in the first timed lap. That's why you could see people doing many laps and longer runs in qualifying than normal. What we did in practice and also Q1 was to learn about the tyres so that we are sure we are making the right decision for what we were going to do in Q3 in terms of tyre temperatures, pressures, and how many laps we do. I think everyone struggled with it today but we got it right, we got the max out of the car and the tyres."