Bottas: My performances are where they need to be

Valtteri Bottas believes that his performances for Mercedes this season are in line with expectations and that although he has not been collecting points, the team are away of the quality of his drives, and that the points will soon come.

Bottas has been plagued by a multitude of bad luck this season, with a number of DNFs and other problems, like tyre issues when in the lead in the British Grand Prix only last weekend dropping him down the grid.

This has meant that despite qualifying on average just +0.059 behind world champion and team-mate Lewis Hamilton, Bottas has yet to win a GP in 2018.

However Bottas isn't overly concerned by his points total and is keen to highlight that Mercedes have been happy with his overall displays.

He said: "[Our] overall performance has just been closer, there have been less bigger gaps between me and Lewis. No matter if the car’s been good to drive or very difficult to drive, I feel I’ve been able to extract what there is and it’s been quite close.

“I’m more or less on the level I want personally. That’s a good thing even though only the team sees in great detail how I perform every week.

“Having a few wins never does anything bad for you for the future but at least the team knows exactly how I’m performing and the direction I’m going with my improvement.”

The Finn reflected on his unfortunate British Grand Prix where he was unable to hold off the challenge of Sebastian Vettel, who would emerge victorious, saying that his tyres had deteriorated to such a degree that it was like 'driving on ice.'

He added: “After the second safety car initially it was fine but he started to get really close and I had to push every lap like a qualifying lap,” said Bottas.

“It was about five laps before the end, it was like driving on ice – I started to lost a lot of grip, especially the rear end, and traction was getting weaker. That’s why he could always get close to me out of slow-speed corners and get the DRS. I was trying everything I could to defend but it was a matter of time.

“I really tried but there was nothing we could do really.”