Bottas ready for fight for third

Valtteri Bottas says Williams is confident it can secure its first podium of the season in the Canadian Grand Prix after a strong qualifying performance.

Bottas will start from fourth place at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with team-mate Felipe Massa fifth and Daniel Ricciardo in sixth. Sebastian Vettel outqualified the two Williams cars to take third on the grid, and while Bottas was disappointed to miss out by just 0.002s he said he is realistic about his chances from the second row.

"I think third was there, it was so close," Bottas said. "It was two thousandths of a second, it is always somehow achievable. In Q3 the last run we had I had a bit more traffic than I'd had in any run before so again we struggled again with the front tyre warm-up.

"That was on the out lap - not on the timed lap, just the out lap - but I couldn't go at the pace I really wanted. I really felt the front tyres were not ready for the timed lap. At least both cars are still in a good position and we know we can have a good fight [in the race]."

Bottas said his confidence stems from a strong run on the soft compound tyre during Friday practice which he hopes will again be the case in the race.

"It seems like our car is quite good with the primes. Especially on the long run the primes seems to go well, there was no degradation really, so once we get the fronts to work it's really consistent. We know that we have the pace to fight with Red Bull, it's just a matter of how do we get in front of them and keep the position."