F1 | Mercedes, Bottas: "It will be a difficult season, the teams are closer"

From this terrible start to 2018, Valtteri Bottas he learned a valuable lesson for the future: starting from behind in the race, this season, will be more penalizing than in the recent past. The Mercedes driver understood this firsthand, starting from 15th place in Melbourne after the accident in qualifying and the subsequent gearbox replacement: "Certainly the pace of all the teams is much closer" – declared the Finn, 8th at the finish line in Albert Park. “I also think this year the cars have more downforce, and with the way the aerodynamics work in the cars it makes chasing even more difficult (to other cars, ed.) compared to last year, therefore the losses are greater. It wasn't a good weekend, but what can you do? I think the mistake I made in qualifying ruined my weekend: we tried to maximize and this was the result. But I'm not panicking, this was only a race of twenty-one: we still have a long year ahead.".

Bottas then focused on the success of Sebastian Vettel and on the "monstre" qualification of Lewis Hamilton: “We seem very close, clearly Ferrari won, but they also won here last year. I think it's going to be a close season, we are not ahead, I think Lewis really did everything well in Q3: maybe the other teams' drivers didn't manage to do everything perfectly. So I think there will be a great battle: it will be a difficult season.".

Federico Martino