Abu Dhabi 'a different ballgame' for Bottas

Abu Dhabi 'a different ballgame' for Bottas

Originally written by Joas van Wingerden. This version is a translation.

Sunday 26 November 2017 11:14

Mercedes Formula One boss Toto Wolff is confident that Valtteri Bottas has learned from his mistakes at the Brazil Grand Prix when he allowed Sebastian Vettel to sneak ahead early on despite being on pole, and insisted the GP at Yas Marina will be a 'different ballgame' for the Finn.

Bottas impressed in qualifying yesterday and recorded the fastest time ahead of team-mate, Lewis Hamilton. He will be in pole position for the start of the Abu Dhabi GP this afternoon, but Wolff has insisted his driver will not have the same problem again this time round like in Brazil.

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"His confidence has been coming back in the last races," said Wolff.

"And we saw a really great qualifying in Brazil, and a great qualifying here.

"But the start [in Brazil] was certainly something he will beating him himself up about. The tricky bit is you don't really see in the rear mirrors, so he struggled to understand where Sebastian was, and didn't want to take any risks.

"Maybe Sunday is going to be a different ball game."

In Brazil, Bottas failed to recover from allowing Vettel to overtake him, but Wolff thinks that the Mercedes car is much more suited to his abilities this time in Abu Dhabi, while claiming that the Finn needs to simply continue with his current form next year in order to secure a contract for the 2019 season.

"We have never doubted in Valtteri's raw speed. You could see that again today," the Mercedes boss continued.

"The difficulty is the interaction with the tyres and just finding the optimum set up to have the tyre in the sweet spot. This is something that has worked much better for Lewis, albeit also very difficult. Valtteri has hit that sweet spot today."

"It is important to see that he continues what he does in the first half year, what we have seen in Brazil, what we have seen today, and then it's a no-brainer.

"We like working with Valtteri and with Lewis, the two fit well together. We have good dynamics in the team and no reason to change it if we continue on where we are today."