Is Bottas good enough? "I don't know what went wrong"

Valtteri Bottas narrowly beat Max Verstappen in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix yesterday, but the Finn was defeated again by his team mate Lewis Hamilton. Now he says he doesn't even know what the problem was.

It's the story of the season for Bottas. He's often very fast but each time he is just beaten by his teammate. This weekend he wasn't the fastest during all the free practice sessions, after which he was beaten by his teammate, but still.

In the press conference after qualifying, Bottas reacted resignedly to the question about his performance. "I just don't know. It felt very good, and I think that is the problem. If you take everything out of the car and the speed is just not there then you have a problem. That's what's confusing about it. I can't say that much about it right now."

Yet the 31-year-old driver of Mercedes makes an attempt. "I didn't make any mistakes and I thought that last lap was very good. It's just little things here and there. It's not clear what one corner is all about, so I have to investigate that. At least we have another Mercedes front row. I am looking forward to tomorrow. There is no underlying problem with the car," Bottas concludes.