The Finn could only qualify sixth on the grid for Sunday’s season-ending finale in Abu Dhabi after struggling for pace in Q3 as he ended up behind McLaren’s Lando Norris, the Red Bull of S🍎ergio Perez and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.&nbs✃p;

Bottas was over six-tenths slower than Me༒rcedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, who𒐪 was beaten to pole position by title rival Max Verstappen. 

But Bottas explained his pace struggles were down to prioritising his car set-up for the race and because he was forced to run an older-mil𒅌eage engine. 

“I kind of hit a lap time limit,” Bottas said. “I think I actually did my best t꧑ime in Q2 and I could never improve that. 

“It felt like the more I trie𒈔d, the set-up of my car didn’t have anymore in it. The way I set-up my car, I went for quite a soft set-up, mechanically, because I feel it’s quite good for the race. 

“I was hoping it would still be OK for qualifying, bꦺut the grip level was improv💛ing quite a lot. 

“The other factor was that we had to change for an older Power Unit for today, which I knew that - a♛t least compared to t🐼he Power Unit I had yesterday - it was going to cost me at least two tenths.” 

Asked why Mercedes opted to change his engine, Bottas replied: “We ꦕare mor♛e confident with this Power Unit, for the reliability.”

Bottas explained that he lost perꦰformance when the gri♕p levels improved as qualifying progressed. 

“Basically, once the grip level started to improve throughout the qualifying, I just couldn’t improve the lap time,” he said. “There was like a hard limit in the car and the more it s🐬tarted to roll, that was the limit.

Bottas added that Merce🅘des also lost time to Red Bull in the slowest corners. 

“I would say that Turn 5 and the▨n Turns 6 and 7෴ have been a bit of an issue, but I would say the medium speed corners have been OK for us,” he explained. 

“Those two places have been a bit tricky, I can’t really say what is the reason for that but Red Bull always sꦐeems good i♈n those kind of corners, anyway.”