F1 | Mercedes, Bottas: “The car wasn't easy to drive”

The Finn concluded the first day of free practice on the circuit of Shanghai with the third time; in the first round he was slowed down by balance problems on his W09, then resolved in the afternoon. Here are his statements:

“We had some issues with the balance in the morning; the car was fast, but it wasn't easy to drive so we changed the set-up for FP2 and saw the lap times improve; Let's hope we can take another step forward tomorrow".

During both sessions the Mercedes duo was split by Kimi Raikkonen, which got a lag of 0.007 from Lewis Hamilton in FP2; second Valtteri Bottas the battle will continue in qualifying and the race:

“Overall, we got a good run and a lot of information, so I feel ready for tomorrow. It seems that the fight will still be with the Ferraris, both in tomorrow's qualifying and in Sunday's race.".