George Russell was delighted to take third place in qualifying for the Italian GP, missing out on a front row grid spot by just four thousandths of a second to McLaren's Oscar Piastri.
It was an especially strong achievement for Russell given how much track time he lost on Friday at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.
He was stood down for first practice in favour of Mercedes new recruit Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who then had an unfortunate accident ten minutes into the session that damaged the car.
The mechanics were still making repairs when second practice got underway, costing Russell almost half an hour of track time. And just when he was ready to go there was a lengthy red flag after Kevin Magnussen spun off.
"It was a very up-and-down weekend. Obviously I missed a lot yesterday, which put me really on the back foot," Russell acknowledged. "It took me a little bit of time to get the most out of the car.
"We've lost quite a few parts, so fingers crossed Lewis and I don't do any further damage," he noted. "Otherwise we'll have to revert to some of the old parts unless we can get some new pieces made in the interim.
"It is not the end of the world as long as we both don't do any further damage," he added. "But as it stands we don't have any spares of our upgraded stuff."
Russell completed just 20 laps on Friday, but put in a last minute flier to jump from bottom place to P6 in the final timings. And the recovery continued in final practice when he was P2 just behind current team mate Lewis Hamilton.
In qualifying, McLaren proved too quick for anyone to catch, but Russell came out best of the rest and was ahead of Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz with Hamilton dropping to sixth and Red Bull out of the picture.
"We hadn't made a lot of changes from FP3 into qualifying because that was really my first proper session out on track," he said. "Q1 and Q2 were really, really messy; I wasn't confident, didn't feel good in the car.
"But P3 was a good result today, a little bit better than I expected," he acknowledged. "I'm really pleased to be lining up P3 after the day we've had, and the car definitely seems to have potential.
"Fortunately we saved it until the end," he commented. "We looked at how to get the best out of the tyres and I saved my two best laps for last.
"I just sort of scraped through the session and then suddenly managed to get in the sweet spot for Q3, both my laps had us third or fourth and we obviously ended up third.
"It was very tight out there between several teams, so starting on the second row is not a bad place to be. Not too far behind the McLaren. To be just one tenth off pole position is a little frustrating but they're so fast at the moment. We're working so hard to catch them up, so I'm super happy with third.
Russell has already won one race this season with victory in the Austrian GP at the end of June. He also crossed the line first in Spa only to be disqualified when post-race scrutineering found his car to be underweight.
Russel said they had plans in place to ensure there would be no repeat of that this week: "Get some nice pizza tonight to fuel me up and a bit of extra weight so we're not too light tomorrow, and hopefully we can fight for a good result!
"I think it's going to be a tight battle. Everybody's so, so close out there. So exciting for F1," he added. "We've all been waiting for this knowing if you do a great job you've got a chance of victory, so I'm pretty pumped for tomorrow.
"I don't really know what to expect because I've just not really done the laps, to be honest," he admitted. "So I just have to trust my instincts and go from there really and adapt on the fly.
"Hopefully we can challenge the McLarens into the first corner and get ahead. If we can't, I think it will be difficult to race them tomorrow. They're super impressive."
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