Bottas: We can attack the Red Bulls

Because of the three grid place penalty, the Mercedes driver will drop to fifth on the grid, which promotes teammate Lewis Hamilton to the front row of the grid, alongside pre-race favourite and pole-winner Max Verstappen.

Nevertheless, Bottas showed handy pace at a good time, ending the day second quickest and, perhaps most importantly, quicker than teammate Hamilton by a mere five-hundredth of a second.

Speaking in poar ferme after a tense qualifying at Red Bull Ring, Bottas said: "Shame about the penalty, I think it was a strong qualifying. If I look at practice two and three, I still struggling a bit with the set-up but it was a much better feeling. It felt good in the car and I felt I got the most out of the car.

"The first run in Q3 I had traffic with Yuki Tsunoda, so I lost a couple of tenths there. Maybe there is more to come. We knew I as going to have the penalty, so we were looking for the best options, so we used to mediums in Q3 to try and start the race. It's a new day tomorrow.

As for the race, Bottas ventured: "The medium should be the better race tyre for our car, even though the Soft runners around me will have a small advantage at the start. The key will be to get past them quickly.

"Obviously I'd rather start second than fifth but it is what it is, I need to deal with the consequences. It will be close with Red Bull, so far this season they've had the edge in qualifying and it's been tight in the races so we're looking forward to it.

"We can attack the Red Bulls," insisted Bottas, who won the Austrian Grand Prix at the same venue last year but has yet to win a race this season. (Additional reporting by Agnes Carlier)