Valtteri Bottas says beating Ferrari to third on the grid for the Japanese Grand Prix was the best Williams could have hoped for after its struggles in Singapore.
Williams was a distance fourth behind Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes at Marina Bay but was right back in the mix as the pecking order returned to normality in Japan. Bottas' first lap in Q3 was half a second off the lead but two tenths quicker than Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel, which turned out to be enough after Daniil Kvyat's late crash ended the session prematurely.
"It's very good for us," Bottas said. "It's very different track from Singapore and we always knew it was going to be better for our car. We came into this weekend for the dry with a good set-up already, so we didn't really have much work to do from practice to qualifying. Today was one of the most difficult Saturdays we've had because there was rain on Friday and here qualifying is very important. So, a good surprise!"
Williams has fallen 112 points behind Ferrari in the battle for second position, despite the fact it finished last year as the quickest team behind Mercedes. Bottas says the team knew the Suzuka configuration suited the upgrades the team initially put on the car for the race at Marina Bay's street circuit.
"We always knew it would be much better than Singapore. We had some new bits for the race in Singapore which produced some more downforce and that's helping here in the high-speed corners, giving good stability from the car. It feels comfortable and from practice onwards everything moved very smoothly. It was a good job today but its tomorrow we need to do a perfect job."