'Anything is still possible from P3' - Bottas

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Valtteri Bottas believes that starting the Monaco Grand Prix from third place gives him everything still to play for this weekend.

Mercedes struggled to show the same pace as Ferrari in qualifying, who successfully locked out the front row for Sunday's race.

Despite that, Bottas was only two thousandths of a second away from pipping Sebastian Vettel to second place. Unfortunately his team mate Lewis Hamilton failed to make it into the final round of qualifying.

"It was very close today but Ferrari seems to have the upper hand here," Bottas admitted. "They were very strong this afternoon.

"Their car is a bit more drivable," he added. "They were quicker today. Well done Kimi for the pole."

Bottas felt confident that the team had rectified the set-up error that cost them time on Thursday and was back up to speed on Saturday morning.

"This weekend has been a bit tricky for us. We started well in FP1 before getting a bit lost with the set-up in FP2. We definitely lost some valuable practice time."

"Got things more or less together in FP3, and in qualifying the car was feeling best so far," he said. Even so, it had been a tough session.

Raikkonen on Monaco pole after nightmare qualifying for Hamilton

"This weekend is still a bit tricky in places, and it was kind of quite difficult to get a lap together," Bottas explained. "It takes two to three laps to build the temperature up and find the right balance and feel for the car.

"I think Lewis also struggled with that and had some traffic in Q2. So not an easy weekend for us."

While the weekend might not have gone entirely to plan for Mercedes so far, Bottas was confident that it was car from a case of all being lost.

"Of course it would be nice to start on the front row," but anything is possible from P3 on the grid," he insisted.

"It's difficult to overtake here but it's definitely a race of opportunity," he added.

"Tomorrow is the race, and this is one of the places where anything can happen."

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Gallery: All the pictures from Saturday in Monaco

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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.