Valtteri Bottas believes it will be a three-way fight between Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull for the final podium position in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Williams expected to struggle at the Hungaroring more then recent tracks due to the circuit's low speed characteristics, but still manage to qualify with both cars in the top eight. Bottas will start from sixth and he concedes Mercedes is out of reach but is Williams is in the mix for a podium.
"Pace wise I think we are going to be quite close to the Ferrari and Red Bull, so I think it is going to be quite a close race," Bottas said. "But here it is so difficult to overtake, especially if you can’t do anything special with strategy. But we need to be there, we need to have a good start and we need to see if there are any opportunities to move up."
Felipe Massa starts from eighth place but agrees with his team-mate's optimism regarding the potential for Williams to fight higher up the grid.
“Well maybe I expected one or two positions better, but we are not far away from where we are supposed to be in terms of how our car is compared to the others," Massa said. "It’s true that when you see you are third, fighting pretty hard in the race before and then you get here and we are P6 and P8 it is a little bit frustrating, but we know it’s also not the best track for us.
“I even said in Silverstone if we get here and we are very competitive here it means we will have no problems at whatever track we go to. Maybe it is not the case, but I still believe it is a race that we can score good points. It is a race that we can be there in the fight and be strong, be competitive. I think the long run yesterday was not really so bad, so even starting a little bit back we still can do a good race tomorrow.”
AS IT HAPPENED: Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying
Click here for a gallery of Sergio Perez's crash in FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix
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