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Williams eyeing Ferrari upset - Bottas

Valtteri Bottas says Williams can fight Ferrari in Sunday's Italian Grand Prix despite being unable to match the leading two teams in qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton took pole position ahead of the two Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. Nico Rosberg in fourth was just 0.3s adrift of his team-mate but nearly a quarter of a second ahead of Felipe Massa as Williams was just unable to bridge the gap.

Asked if Williams can challenge Ferrari in race trim, Bottas replied: "At least what we saw on Friday, I think we can.

"It’s so difficult always to predict how much more they have but what we think now, is that we should be able to fight with them. That would be nice and would make a really interesting race tomorrow."

However, Bottas conceded he had hoped to be able to get ahead of one of the Ferraris or Rosberg during qualifying based on the progress shown on Saturday.

"I was expecting more today definitely. In practice three we looked quite competent and we thought we could challenge Ferrari as well in qualifying but they made a bit of a step. They had a bit more in their back pocket for qualifying but it was not really possible to beat Ferrari with our car today and obviously Mercedes was very quick as always.

"As a team 5^th and 6^th was the maximum today and for sure, I would have preferred it to be the other way between Felipe and me. He had a good lap today and I think I didn’t have the perfect tow, not the perfect first sector but he did well today and my qualifying was not perfect today."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.