Valtteri Bottas outqualified his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton for the third time this season when he powered to second place on the grid for the Canadian Grand Prix but afterwards suggested that had Mercedes not withheld their engine updates he might have started from the top spot on race day.
Mercedes delayed the roll-out of their new update power units due to “quality issues” and as a result, they were up against Ferrari and Renault teams using their updated engines.
After a close qualifying, Bottas suggested that this might have been the small difference between pole and second on the grid, “Obviously everything with the new engines, the numbers we have, they are just theory, but there would have been gains and I think it would have been a closer fight for pole position with that engine. We’ll get it later, anyway, so it’s all good.
Nevertheless, Bottas was content with his day at the office, “That was a pretty good qualifying session. I was able to find a lot of performance from FP3 to qualifying and it felt like I got everything out of the car.”
“It’s a good result, although it’s not perfect to start behind the Ferrari, but we knew that they would bring some improvements for this weekend. Red Bull will also be a threat, but it’s cool to see three teams fighting for the win.”
“We’re happy that we qualified on the UltraSoft tyre in Q2, I think it’s the right choice for our car. It will be interesting to see how it does in the start of the race, especially because Red Bull will start on the HyperSoft.”
“Overall it seems like the margins are very small between the top three teams, so the strategy could really be the key. It should be an interesting race,” predicted the Finn who finished second at last year’s race in Canada.