Valtteri Bottas admits his latest narrow defeat to Lewis Hamilton in qualifying was “really annoying” at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
The Finn had led all three practice sessions at Portimao, but when it mattered, Valtteri once again came up short as his Mercedes teammate found just enough to make it 97 Formula 1 poles.
While obviously frustrated to be starting second, a position that also puts him on the dirty side of the grid, he downplayed the significance of doing so after leading through Friday and Saturday morning.
“It is annoying, it’s really annoying,” Bottas said in parc ferme.
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“But practice sessions, being at the top, it doesn’t matter anyway. Always I try to reset from each session and focus on the coming one.
“Especially after practice three, you need to reset and take all the learnings you can from the practice to do things even better.”
The difference in qualifying this time stemmed from Hamilton’s decision to complete two flying laps on his last run in Q3 compared to Bottas on the traditional single timed lap approach.
This as both drivers also switched to the usually slower medium compound, which has proven just as if not quicker than the soft tyre.
“It was my decision to go for one timed lap because it worked in Q2, but apparently it seems like doing two timed laps for Lewis was better,” Bottas conceded.
“Obviously, with one timed lap you can have less fuel in the car, but you might struggle with the tyre warm-up. I went for that, it was a decent lap, not perfect.
“It’s been tricky here to get really clean laps this weekend because of the way the track is, but the lap was good. I think ultimately I should have gone for two timed laps as well.
“I was just wishing I could have had one more lap, as I would then have the feel for it. Wrong call from my side. It’s annoying for sure, but Lewis did a good job at the end.
“Knowing that you have the pace, yeah it’s annoying but that’s how it is and I need to quickly forget that. It’s only qualifying and the race is tomorrow and I know I will have the speed.”