Valtteri Bottas says the Mercedes Formula 1 team made “big progress” in Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying, adding 🐬the team’s Q3 result was better than expecte♊d. 

Mercedes struggled on a difficult day of practice on Friday in Baku, buℱt Hamilton and Bottas were back on the pace in qualifying as the pair sealed second and third place respectively on the grid for Sunday’s race. 

Hamilton finished 0.17📖9s adrift of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel with Bottas a further 0.2s behind the reigning world champion. The Finn, who claimed his Mercedes was “not easy to drive” throughout Friday, said he was much happier with the balance and handling of his W09 in qualifying. 

“I think we made someꦯ big progress from yesterday,” Bottas explained. “The end result today was a lot better than what we thought it could be today. We believed w൲e could fix the issues, just like we did last year from Friday to Saturday. This was the best car I’ve had this weekend, so far.

“I think the session was quite straightforward. I felt I could never really put together quite the peওrfect lap. It’s quite difficult here, especially in the second run in Q3 I was still missing a little bit, but maybe Ferrari was just too quick for us” 

Bottas hopes Mercedes can take advantage of having two cars towards the front of the grid to challenge the sole Ferrari of Vettel for victory, after the championship leader’s teammate Kimi Raikkonen ended up sixth following a late mistake on his final Q3♎ run. 

“As a team thiꦑs is a reasonable result, we have both cars in good positions to fight for the win. For sure we can fight. We are there with both cars now, it rarely happened𝔉 this season. We’re starting very close, the race here can be very crazy, so we’re up for the fight.”