Ferrari, McLaren F1 drivers will be hard to overtake at the US GP

The Finn only qualified fourth after a “chaotic” last lap at the COTA on Saturday and with a new engine slipped five places back to ninth place.

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.

“They are certainly not the easy cars to overtake,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com about the two teams currently fighting for third place in the championship.

“And based on what I felt yesterday, it was pretty difficult to follow, 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. “

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

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.

Commenting on the Red Bulls’ pace, he said: “They looked okay yesterday, but nothing special. I think they found something more than we did overnight.

“To me the car felt a lot better than yesterday, but Red Bull still 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 had received three penalties on the grid in 2021, he hopes that the two remaining engines will bring him by the end of the season.

“It’s a shame and, of course, pretty unfortunate, so often in the last few races. But now it’s only a five-place penalty, but it never helps if you fight for every single point, it makes everything more.” But keep your fingers crossed, the rest of the year will be fine with no penalties.

“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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