Toto Wolff believes Mercedes have made improvements in a number of key areas which enabled Lewis Hamilton to pip both Red Bull cars to pole position in Imola. The Mercedes team boss explained the world champions needed things to go their way to beat Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen in qualifying. "We solved some of the balance issues that we had in Bahrain," Wolff told RacingNews365.com and other select members of the press. "The drivability of the power unit has gotten better and the track conditions obviously are very different to the ones in Bahrain, so all of that played a certain factor. "But if you compare the laps to Red Bull, Max without the mistake would have been on pole, solid on pole. Maybe not as much as Bahrain, but he would have been there so we are also not making mistakes and trying to put everything together. All that food that gave us the pole position today." Valtteri Bottas will start the race from eighth place after the Finn make a significant error at the first chicane on his first Q3 run. This put Bottas under severe pressure for the second lap. The Mercedes driver was too cautious in the first sector, in an attempt to not repeat the same mistake, and he overdid the second half of the lap which cost him valuable time. "Valtteri was pretty good all weekend in turn two and three but both drivers had a warm up issue at the beginning of the track," said Wolff. "In Q1, once we were able to give Valtteri second lap on the tyre to bring in the temperatures, he was really very good. "I think the Q1 second Q1 lap would have gotten him on P4. So it's a warm up issue and we know exactly what it is and, and Valtteri knows but nevertheless, I think he's he's an okay position for the race tomorrow."
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