Bottas: Results not good enough

Valtteri Bottas concedes his results have not been good enough in 2018, but the Mercedes man is enthused by his consistent performances so far. Bottas his third in the drivers' standings after five races, but he is yet to win, despite several chances to take victory this year.

Bottas has finished second three times this season, in Bahrain, China and Spain.

He failed to make a last-lap move on Sebastian Vettel in Sakhir, before a safety car in Shanghai took a likely win away from him by allowing Red Bull to put Daniel Ricciardo on a winning strategy, while an Azerbaijan Grand Prix that fell into his hands was snatched away by a puncture.

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By the fifth race in 2017, Bottas had taken his first pole position and race victory, but he is yet to secure either so far in a season in which he needs to impress to secure his future with the team.

"I think this year I've been meeting more or less my targets with the performance for the beginning of the year," Bottas said.

"I've been able to continue the good performance since the end of last year and there's been no weekends that I've been really way off the pace like there was a few last year.

"So I think I've learned from those.

"I need to continue my development. There's never things that you can't learn more. I still hope I keep improving.

"But there's been mixed races and the end results haven't been really I feel sometimes quite there that I think would have been possible with the pace we had.

"And also [in Barcelona] the gap to Lewis was huge but I think there's many things that affected that.

"So I'm happy and I know we can win races, I know the speed is there for that this year, it's just extremely difficult but it's possible and it will come.

"We're so early in the season. I hope I've had my bad luck for the year."