Valtteri Bottas is remaining positive ahead of the Russian Grand Prix despite narrowly missing out on pole position as Ferrari locked out the front row.
The Finn looked in contention for pole throughout the qualifying session but a mistake at the final corner saw him pipped to pole by less than a tenth of a second.
Speaking after qualifying, Bottas said: “I think we can see Ferrari were quicker today. We were close in the end, but not close enough.
“All weekend they’ve had the upper hand and they’ve managed to extract more out of the tyres. They are looking very strong here and, as we’ve seen so far this year, Ferrari have a good race pace and we expect it to be the same tomorrow.
Bottas, though, believes that the work the team carried out overnight will be critical to the performance in the race.
With a one kilometre run down to Turn 2, he is keen to bounce back from his defeat in qualifying and beat the Ferraris into the lead at the start of the race.
“We made an improvement from yesterday,” Bottas added. “It wasn’t quite enough but I think the changes we made overnight should help us in the race.
“Tomorrow is where it counts and starting on the second row is still not a bad place to begin the race. There’s a very long run down into Turn 2 and a lot of slipstreaming. Ferrari is ahead today, but hopefully not tomorrow.”
