Valtteri Bottas was left ruing a couple of small mistakes in the final🧸 sector of his last Q3🦄 lap in qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Saturday after narrowly losing out on pole position to Mercedes Formula 1 teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Bottas bounced back from a difficult Q2 to grab second place on the grid at the Yas Mar🌟ina Circuit, finishing 0.162 seconds shy of Hamilton in the ♐final stage of qualifying.

As his😼 t🧔eammate celebrated his 11th pole of the year, Bottas was left with a pang of disappointment after seeing his hopes disappear in the final sector of the lap, prior to which he was within one-tenth of Hamilton's time💃, only to lose another tenth to his teammate.

"For sure I was aiming for the po꧒le. I had a good result here last year 𒆙but I couldn’t repeat that," Bottas said after the session.

"Personally, P2 is not what I was aiming for, but for us, even after we could secure the c⛦onstructors’ title, we can still perform at a very high level. So, as a team, being P1 and P2 for the final rac♌e is good.

"In my first lap I felt there was plenty I could improve, and the gap would get smaller between us than in the first runs. In the second run I think there was definitely some track improvement, and both of us managed to find some timꦚe. But he j🏅ust managed to get a little bit of a more complete lap, in the end."

Bottas explained how he struggled to dial his Merc💧edes W09 car in through the earlier stages of qualifying, particularly when running on the Ultrasoft tyre in Q2.

"I think that what hurt me a bit was there was a couple of runs in qualifying where I couldn’t get a good lap in," Bottas saidꦉ.

"I think with the Ultrasoft tyres, at the start of Q2 and in some🐷 other runs, I really✱ struggled with some things in the car.

"But I managed t꧋o have a couple of decent laps in Q3 and we could secure a well-earned one-two for the team."