Valtteri Bottas says he feels confident going into the Chinese Grand Prix having claimed pole position and despite having a strong opportꦯunity to extend his early Formula 1 world championship lead he isn’t keen thinking too far ahead.

Bottas has claimed his seventh career F1 pole position at the 1000^th World Champions൲hip Grand Prix, and his first sinc🐬e last year’s Russian round, by beating Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton by just 0.023s with his final flying lap.

Having looked dominant in fina❀l practice and overhauling Hamilton’s slender advantage after the first flying laps in Q3, the Finn says he’s feeling confident and in sync with his Mercedes 2019 F1 car but won’t be looking too far ahead of tomorrow’s race in Shanghai.

“Confidence wise I’m good, thanks for asking, it has been a good start of the year,” Bottas said. “First of all for me personally, but also for us as a team, it has been optimum but it’s only the beg𒊎inning of the year.

“🍎I feel confident, today it was a good day today, hopefully tomorrow will be again, but it’s꧙ a long season ahead.

“It’s been a good 🔯weekend so far for me, starting from pole position. I felt already really confident this morning, in FP3. In the qualifying, I honestly struggled a bit in Q3 to get t🐓he perfect lap, but it was good enough.”

Assessing the pace between the topꦉ three teams, Bottas is hesitant to make firm predictions and is expecting tough challenges from both his teammate and the Ferrari and Red Bull dr🦋ivers.

“Looking from Friday, it has been p🧸retty close between the top three teams,” he said.꧅ “There are many question marks, but today it’s encouraging, so we’ll go for it.”

Bottas leads the early F1 Drivers’ World Championship by a single point ahead of Hamilton, with both Mercedes drivers sharing identical results from🅷 🌠the opening two rounds while the Finn holds an extra point from setting the fastest lap in Australia.