While teammate Lewis Hamilton has taken pole for the first two races of the season, Mercedes newcomer Bottas is still chasing his first front row start with the team - as Vettel narrowly denied him on both occasions.

The Finn was 0.025s off Vettel in Q3 in Australia, and was denied by a last-gasp effort by the Ferrari man in China as well, coming up 0.001s short.

"Around one lap here, one-thousandth [of a second] is not so much," Bottas said. "It is a real shame he [Vettel] managed to between us.

"So, yeah, that's a shame - but the race is tomorrow, we are starting as a team first and third and it is a good place to start, weather can be anything, really, tomorrow.

"Lewis was strong today and Ferrari was strong, we expected a close fight today on track and I think it will be the same case tomorrow."

"Definitely more comfortable"

While he posted the same qualifying result as in Melbourne, Bottas said his second race weekend with Mercedes has so far been "a different feeling" compared to his debut.

"Definitely approaching this weekend compared to Melbourne, it was a different feeling," he said.

"That one full race weekend, doing qualifying and race with a podium finish was a nice start. So I'm definitely more comfortable [now].

"There is a big learning curve for me with everything and I feel better and better every single day and every single lap with the car."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble