Not the qualifying session Valtteri Bottas was hoping for in Yas Marina, as he only closed it in P6; it feels like from that position he cannot help the World Championship contender Lewis Hamilton. Bottas had to revert to an older power unit for qualifying and it hindered him badly as he lost out to Norris, Perez and Sainz in the battle for 3rd on the grid.

Soon after the session, Bottas commented: 

"In Q2, I think I did my best lap time and I could never improve that," said Bottas.

"It felt like the more I tried, it felt like the set-up didn't have any more in it.

"I went for a quite soft set-up mechanically and I feel it's really good for the race, and I was hoping it should still be OK for the qualifying. But the grip was improving quite a lot. so that's one thing.

"We had to change to an older PU for today, which I knew that it was, compared to yesterday, at least two tenths."

Mercedes has decided to adopt a medium-tyre start strategy, differently to Red Bull which is going to start on soft tyres. Bottas commented this with: “I think starting with mediums means we can go longer in the first stint and try different strategies. Softs need to be changed many laps before.”

Red Bull used the tow strategy with Perez, which helped Verstappen take pole; Mercedes did not try it. The Finn commented: “We didn’t try it because normally is easier for it to go wrong. It went good with Red Bull today but we didn’t try it because normally it penalises one of the drivers”