Bottas was leading for Mercedes in both FP1 and FP2 on Friday and said he felt “much happier” with the W12 car after battling tail instability through pre-season testing and the opening weekend in Bahrain.
But the Finn fell back to a disappointing eighth place in qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and finished the session almost half a second ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton in pole position.
Bottas stated after qualifying that he felt a return of the rear-end fighting from Mercedes in the third quarter so that he could not fully get the performance out of the car.
“P8 is definitely not what I was aiming for today, and especially with the feeling at the beginning of qualifying,” said Bottas. “In the first run of the third quarter I took Turn 2 and had a very sudden crack from the rear. Then it really went through Sector 1 and I lost a lot of time.
“Actually the same [happened] in the second run it was never there. I couldn’t trust the rear of the car and it was something I hadn’t felt before in all of qualifying.
“I do not know what happened. So I have to investigate. In any case, it’s disappointing. “
But Bottas felt that, unlike the rear-end fights it fought in Bahrain, the Mercedes W12 now had more problems entering the corner.
“It was something else [to Bahrain]”Added Bottas.” Now it was more in the corner, which I had never had before.
“So yes, we have to make sure that everything was okay with the car first. It wasn’t ideal. “
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The result has meant that Bottas is facing a setback through the field on Sunday on a track on which it is traditionally quite difficult to overtake.
Mercedes also has the prospect of Red Bull splitting its strategies against pole-sitter Hamilton. Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen start in second and third.
When asked about the prospect of facing the Red Bulls alone on Sunday, Hamilton said he was delighted with the challenge.
“It’s great, we finally have the two Red Bulls here,” said Hamilton. “I think it will definitely make the strategy more difficult and it will be a real challenge tomorrow because they have a great race pace.
“I think their pace was the strongest in the long run yesterday.”
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