F1 | Interview with Valtteri Bottas: “You need to know how to adapt to cars and circuits, I learned this from Lewis”

He was one of the most talked about drivers of the last Formula 2020 weekends of 1, partly due to his certainly not brilliant performances, but also seeing the big difficulties he had with George Russell in the second race in Bahrain. Valtteri Bottas has certainly experienced the most difficult season since he raced for Mercedes, not so much from the point of view of position in the standings (second with this car, behind Hamilton, is almost obligatory, ed.) but rather in terms of performance. Only two victories and many wasted opportunities, with some really low level races, see Turkey and Sakhir to name the most recent ones, but without forgetting Imola and the bad starts like at Silverstone.

However, the Finn suffered some problems: the damaged surface in the Emilia Romagna GP or the slippery asphalt in Istanbul heavily influenced his way of tackling the weekends, and in fact the results did not arrive. Between the two races in Bahrain we managed to have a discussion with Bottas, organized by Petronas, in a sort of virtual round table.

– Have there been any changes to your driving style between reducing engine revs and different single-seaters year after year?

“I didn't have to change my riding style – Valtteri told us. Clearly you need to be able to adapt when it comes to consumption, but there's no need for big changes, it's small things. The car is different every year, as are the tracks, you always have to adapt to new tracks and cars season after season, it's about details. In this I learned a lot from Lewis, is very accurate regarding corner entry and I believe that we will be able to see the real change in 2022 with the new single-seaters."

– On the Petronas side, how much do you communicate during the race weekends? Do you have a way to discuss before each session?

“With Petronas we don't have direct communication, but our engineers and those of the supplier always talk, analyze everything and see what needs to be done to improve, this is the best approach on the technical side both from their point of view and from ours. I focus more on the performance, the set up and the mechanical side, but obviously I give some feedback to Petronas and receive the right information before each weekend."