Bottas: Seven-tenths is obviously a big gap

Hamilton shattered the Marina Bay Circuit lap record with the best time of 1:36.015 in Q3, while Bottas who was only good for 1:36.702, almost seven-tenths down on the benchmark time, conceded, "P4 is obviously not ideal."

And added, "I can't be happy with this result. Everything was going pretty well from FP3 all the way up to Q2, but then the others could find big chunks in Q3 and I couldn't, I just didn't really feel the track improvement."

"Lewis put in a great lap, but seven-tenths is obviously a big gap, so I will need to have a look and analyse what exactly the issue was. The long-run times between Ferrari, Red Bull and us looked fairly comparable, so it's a shame I couldn't qualify higher and attack from the front row."

"We are definitely more competitive here than we were last year. The car has been improved and we also chose the right set-up direction. So I'm optimistic for tomorrow; it's a new day and at least one Ferrari will start behind me."

"We still have a long race ahead of us and I will push hard to try and get ahead of Sebastian. With three teams in the mix, everything is possible. It's difficult to overtake on this track, so both the start and the strategy will decide who wins this race," added Bottas who finished third at last years race.