The Finn only qualified fourth after a “chaotic” last lap at the COTA on Saturday and slipped five places back to ninth place after a new engine.
In order to enter the front-line battle between his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton and the two Red Bull drivers, he has to pass Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri and the two cars from the McLaren and Ferrari teams.
“These are certainly not the easiest cars to overtake,” he said when asked by Autosport about the two teams that are currently fighting for third place in the championship.
“And from what I felt yesterday, the chase was pretty tough, but at least it looks like it’s going to be more or less a two-stop race so there will be at least two options with the strategy. And you never know there will be opportunities. “
Bottas admitted that his crucial final lap in Q3 didn’t go according to plan.
“Of course I tried to be as high as possible, but the problem for me was that the second run in Q3 was pretty chaotic in the last sector, I had a bit of front locking and understeer and I just lost a lot of time. So too The first lap was reasonably decent, but sector three wasn’t that good.
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
On the Red Bulls’ pace, he added: “Yesterday [Friday] They looked ok but nothing special so they found something more than we did overnight.
“For me the car felt a lot better than yesterday, but Red Bull took a bigger step in performance and they definitely had the upper hand today. I still think it would be pretty similar in terms of racing pace. “
After Bottas has received three penalties on the grid so far in 2021, Bottas hopes that the two remaining engines will bring him by the end of the season.
“It’s unfortunate and of course pretty unfortunate, so often in the last few races,” he said.
“But now it’s only a five-place penalty, but it never helps if you’re fighting for every single point, that makes things more difficult.
“We always know what the problem is, sometimes it’s a little different, mostly the same. But there is still no real solution, but at least we didn’t see any problems with the engine I drive here.
“And the other one I have in the pool, which is still very fresh, is also working well. So I hope that I can get through to the end with these two engines. “
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