Valtteri Bottas has hailed the “big improvement” made by his Mercedes Formula 1 team ahead of qualifying for the⛄ Mexican Grand Prix.

Mercedes endured a difficult day of running on Friday and struggled to match the pace managed by the Red Bull duo, while the team also had to turn down its engౠines 🍨down on both cars amid overheating fears.

It’s uncharacteristic below-par practice performance led Lewis Hamilton to claim Red Bull were “out o🀅f reach” for Merce💜des heading into qualifying.

🦋But a much-improved display, aided by cooler conditions on Saturday, enabled Hamilton to qualify third and just 0.135s off pole, while Bottas recovered from an engine issue in FP3 to spl🥃it the Ferrari pair in fifth.

“I think the biggest thing to talk about is the big improvement we’ve made, as a team from yesterday,”💙 Bottas said.

“The car was a lot better, had a lot better performance than yesterday, so the teaꦿm did a really good job on day.

“I think with the car we had yesterday, the highest we🌠 could have definitively been was fifth and sixth.

“What was done for today allowed for Lewis to get P3 and I was a couple tenths away. There was a big difference from yesterday, but we still needed to find a few more tenths.”

Further rain and thunderstorms are expected🐼 prior to Sunday’s race, which Bottas reckons will cause 𒁏a difficult day of tyre management due to the increased grained created by ‘green’ track conditions.

“The track always re-sets with the rain, with a lot of dust. The greener the track, the more graining we get and it could b♌e a difficult day tomorrow,” he explained.

“But we’re not the only team struggling with graining, I’m❀ sure it will be the same for💟 everyone. The key in the race is not to open up the graining, but here there’s a possibility for one or two stops.

“If y🥀ou can avoid the graining, one stop will be possible, but if you get graining then you’ll have to do two stops.”