Bottas gambled wrong: "Tomorrow won't be easy"

Valtteri Bottas took a gamble by starting the sprint race on softs, unlike Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, who were on mediums. He failed to gain a place in the race, however.

"We tried to do something different. The target was to get him [Verstappen] in the first lap," Bottas said after the sprint qualifying session. "We didn't succeed. In the first corner, I was blocked so I couldn't get the momentum. Then the blistering but it was okay.

"But we tried, and in the end, we managed to keep the same position we started from, although I suffered a bit from blisters," continued the Finnish driver.

With blisters appearing on both the soft and medium compounds, this did highlight a few things. "Tomorrow won't be easy, and when it gets a bit warmer we might see more problems. At least we are aware of that now, and tomorrow basically anything can happen," Bottas said.