Valtteri Bottas declared himself "not satisfied" by qualifying third for the Australian Grand Prix after being pipped to a place on the front row by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.
Bottas had edged Lewis Hamilton in Q2 but fell behind his Mercedes teammate and Vettel in the top-ten shootout, finishing 0.3s shy of P1. The Finn had admitted after Friday practice he had work to do to cut the gap to his teammate and he was ahead at the end of Q2, only to fall short when it counted.
Despite a strong showing with his new team Bottas was left to reflect on what might have been after Q3, though he was happy to see Mercedes beat Ferrari to pole.
"Third position is not ideal," the Finn said. "In general I'm not happy with the result. But what I'm really happy about and proud about as Lewis said, what the team has done again with this car and I only saw a very small part of the preparation with the new car and the new era of Formula One, and it's really nice to see that all the work has paid off and we're fighting at the very front. It seems to be very close this year, especially here."
Bottas believes he and Mercedes, who shared the front two rows with Ferrari, have reason to be optimistic for the race on Sunday.
"Myself I didn't get any perfect laps in, so not that satisfied. Tomorrow's the day that matters. It seems like in the race starts we've been quite strong. If we can keep that form I had in practice, and have a nice and clean race and get some really good points."