Valtteri Bottas accepted that Mercedes did not fully maximise the tyres during qualifying in China, but says it does not fully explain the squad’s sizeable deficit to Ferrari. Mercedes was unable to challenge Ferrari during the Q3 shootout at Shanghai as Sebastian Vettel beat Kimi Raikkonen to pole, with third-placed Bottas over half a second adrift. When asked whether the gap came as a surprise to Mercedes, which had taken pole position at the venue for the last six years, Bottas said: “Yeah, we are. “We thought coming into today that we would be fighting for the pole position but it was definitely out of reach today, there was nothing in the lap that we could have...
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