Having lapped 0.293s off teammate Lewis Hamilton, who took pole for the Australian GP, Bottas was then denied a front row start by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel in the dying seconds of the final segment.

The Finn admitted in the post-qualifying press conference that the result was a frustrating one.

"Third position is not ideal, in general I am not happy for the result," he said.

"What I am happy about, what I am proud about is what team has done with this car. I only saw a small part of the preparation with new car and new era of F1, but it is nice to see how the work is paying off at the front, it seems to be close this year.

"Myself, I didn't get quite any perfect laps in, so not that satisfied. Tomorrow is the day that matters, it seems like in the race cars it will be quite strong so hopefully we will be strong like in practice."

Bottas elaborated that he was particularly unhappy to allow a rival team's car between himself and his teammate.

"As a team, what we don't want is to get another car from another team between us," he said. "I am always optimistic - for a little while I can be disappointed but I know we can do good things tomorrow and tomorrow is what matters.

"I set the bar very high [for myself], I didn't meet it today but there is a long race ahead of us tomorrow."

Vettel "not entirely happy" with front row lap

Vettel, meanwhile, said was somewhat underwhelmed by his best effort in qualifying, despite it being good enough to deny Mercedes a front row lockout.

The Ferrari driver, who beat Bottas by 0.025s, was more than a quarter of a second off poleman Hamilton - and while he doesn't believe he could've taken the fight to the Briton, he says he could've been closer to pole time.

"In the end, I was not entirely happy with the lap. Pretty happy - but not the bit where I lost too much. I don't think pole was up for grabs," said Vettel, having finished almost six tenths clear of teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

"I think we have a good car, we are working well as a team and things are improving. It is nice to see. We had a mixed day yesterday, but confidence was there after testing.

"Tomorrow I think we can do something in the race, the pace should be much better than yesterday. It has been a big winter for us, a lot of change we have gone through as a team the last 12 months - and the team has got stronger."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble