Valtteri Bottas admitted his performance during qualifying for the Sakhir Grand Prix was “not my best” in Formula 1, despite taking pol🎉e position.

The Finn narrowly beat Mercedes new boy George Russell - standing in for Lewis Hamilton for the weekend after t♉he seven-time world champion con꧙tracted coronavirus - by just 0.026s in an incredibly tight qualifying session around Bahrain’s shorter Outer Loop circuit.

Although he claimed his fourth pole position of the year, and his first since last month’s Emౠilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, Bottas conceded🐈 it was far from his best Saturday showing of his F1 career.

"For sure it's a different situation to have a new team-mateღ but ultimately I just wanted to focus on my own doing, and not to waste energy anywhere else, and I t🥂hink I managed to do that,” Bottas said.

"I think strategy wise we ar🌳e in a great place as a team and good to see George locking ou꧅t the front row as well. It's good to be on pole, I'm happy for that but not my best qualifying. I'm happy it was enough.”

Bottas said he was the only driver who did not receive a tow from a car ahead on his final qualifying run of Q3 as he failed to improve his tim♎e.

“I think the main thing was that there were no cars ahead of me, so no to♐w at all,” he explained. “I could see and feel that I was not s🧜o fast on the straights.

“The corners were still quite ൲OK, although I didn’t quite nail Turn Seven/Turn Eight and maybe the exit of Turn Ten as well.

“To be honest it’s quite a tricky circuit to get everything right, with the twisty sect🦄ions and everything but, like I said before, I’m just happy it was enough for pole.”