F1 | Mercedes, Bottas on 2017: "At first I was confused, mentally it wasn't easy"

Valtteri Bottas he looks to the 2018 World Championship with optimism, aware of the mistakes made in his first season at Mercedes. Interviewed by Motorsport.com, the 28-year-old Finn explained that he had assimilated the difficulties encountered, especially in terms of adaptation, in 2017: “After struggling a lot for a couple of races, mentally it wasn't easy: at the beginning I was quite confused. For sure you also start to doubt what you are doing, then even when you have to change some things about your riding style and you have to adapt to many different things, you suddenly realize that it is not that simple. I learned from difficult races, for example in Spa, Malaysia or Japan, so I think I'm a much better driver. If there are similar challenges in 2018, I will be prepared".

The former Williams player made up for it from his partner, and new world champion, Lewis Hamilton a gap of 58 points in the drivers' standings: in this regard, the Brit's experience, according to Bottas, played a fundamental role. “What Lewis did better than me, I think it's mostly due to experience. I've always known that he's really talented, that he's fast in all circumstances, that as soon as he gets in the car he's immediately very fast. But this also comes from hard work: Lewis works hard with the team. Generally speaking, I think that mechanically the car had not changed much compared to that of recent years: however, it was very different to Williams, so I learned a lot of things”.

Federico Martino