Valtteri Bottas has conceded he struggled to match Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton ⛎for outright pace having missed vital practice work over the French Grand Prix weekend but was still thrilled to secure a front row start at Paul Ricard.

The Finnish driver was forcedꦐ out of the majority of FP2 on Friday afternoon due to a water leak with his ‘2.1’-specification Mercedes engine before seeing most of the one-hour final practice on Saturday washed out by a heavy rain shower.

As a result, Bottas feels he never quite caught up Mercedes teammate Hamilton for optimum pace over a single lap so was content with ending𒈔 qualifying just over one-tenth of a second off of the pole-sitter.

“It was not a bad lap but not a perfect lap either,” Bottas said. “I’ve been struggling to get perfect laps this weekend, missed pretty much all of FP2 and we didn’t do any running in FP3, so I w🥀as kind of catching up run by run, but one-two for us is perfect.”

While Hamilton was hesitant to immediately praise the new Mercedes engine, which had been delayed from an initial introduction in Canada due to🌃 a quality issue reported at its Brixworth factory, Bottas felt the update was key to the team’s immediate qualifying jump in performance at Paul Ricard with a front row lockout.

“It feels good the new engine, it’s very fresh and the team has made an amazing job on that,” he said. “Hopefully 🦩also tomorrow we can prove t𝔍hat is good.

“I think we definitively needed it, it’s going to be a close season ahead a🌌nd it was good to have it for this race. Obviously it would have helped the team in Montreal, but we’re here now and we’re in the first row,𒉰 so it’s good.”