Mercedes-Benz team principal Toto Wolff is confident that Valtteri Bottas can get a top-four finish in tomorrow’s Belgium Grand Prix as the Finn looks to charge up the order from 13th on the grid.

Bottas, who celebrated his 32nd birthday today, had a difficult qualifying session as Mercedes struggled with the wet conditions, which included the team narrowly avoiding being eliminated in the second part of qualifying as they hurriedly switched from wet tyres to intermediate tyres as the track dried. 

In what was a disrupted final qualifying session which was marred by Lando Norris’s heavy accident at Eau Rouge, Bottas could only manage eighth quickest behind Sergio Perez, which became thirteenth after the Finn’s five-place grid penalty for causing a collision on the opening lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix was applied.

Nevertheless, Wolff, who was speaking to selected members of the media, which included MotorLat, is hopeful that Bottas can charge through the pack and secure a good haul of points to help build upon their twelve-point lead in the constructors' championship over Red Bull.

“I think we have a really quick racing car, and if the weather conditions remain dry or nearly, we have good straight-line speed, and we have opted for more of a drier set up in order to maximise on straight-line speed, which beat us a little bit today.”

“So I think he has a good car underneath him tomorrow, and depending on the weather, he can score some solid points and come back in the top four.”

Mercedes team leader Lewis Hamilton managed to qualify third on the grid alongside McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, but both driver's performances were overshadowed by George Russell who managed to put his Williams second on the grid alongside Max Verstappen after a mighty final run in Q3.

Wolff, who currently manages the 23-year-old Brit, analysed the footage from all the drivers after the completion of qualifying and noticed that Russell was making up time into La Source by being the only driver using the apex of the corner, with Wolff also praising Williams for perfecting their gamble of setting two consecutive qualifying laps.

“I looked at the onboards of all the drivers, and from the beginning, he is (Russell) the only one to gain so much time in La Source to everyone else because he’s the only one on the apex, and that’s a fact of driving and also having the right set-up and the right tyre temperatures in the window.

“The way Williams approached qualifying was very clever, risky but clever with two consecutive laps and he was very committed through Eau Rouge, and the car looks very good through the lap, but it needs the driver to exploit the full potential of the package or over-perform the package, and I think all that came together and we saw a brilliant lap from a brilliant young driver.”