Bottas: "big progress" in Baku

Valtteri Bottas praised his Mercedes team saying that they had made "big progress" having been almost a second off of the pace during Friday practice. Bottas and teammate Lewis Hamilton recovered on Saturday after set up changes to qualify third and second respectively.

The Finn had described his car as "not easy to drive" after both of the Friday practices but was in a far better mood after qualifying.

I think we made some big progress from yesterday,” he said. “The end result today was a lot better than what we thought it could be today. We believed we could fix the issues, just like we did last year from Friday to Saturday. This was the best car I’ve had this weekend, so far.

Bottas is currently third in the driver standings and is only 14 points off of Sebastian Vettel in first. He is performing the best he has since joining the world champions Mercedes and a strong result could thrust him well and truly into the 2018 championship battle.