Hamilton expects Bottas improvement

Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton thinks that his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas will improve in the 2018 campaign after a debut 2017 season with the Silver Arrows in which the Finn finished third in the Championship rankings behind the Brit and Sebastian Vettel.

Even though Mercedes won the team championship and driver's championship in 2016 via Nico Rosberg, that season saw continuous feuding between Rosberg and Hamilton. The German ultimately shocked the F1 world by announcing his retirement shortly after the victory, meaning that Mercedes were in need of a new driver to partner Hamilton.

Bottas was chosen as a more complimentary driver to Hamilton than Rosberg was, and the Silver Arrows would go on to win the team title for a fourth year in a row in 2017, with Bottas gaining three flags.

Hamilton outperformed Bottas in 13 of the races in the Grand Prix season, but thinks Bottas will improve when the new campaign starts in March.

"Valtteri's been an amazing team-mate this year," said Hamilton.

"It's not easy at all to go to a team for the first year, particularly as you already had plans to be somewhere else at the beginning of the year. You then have a very short period of time to get used to a new team, learn the new systems, learn the tools which you'll use during the year.

"It takes a long time to learn how to manipulate the car to help extract your performance, so he hit the ground pretty fast at the beginning of the year. Then another part of it is the pressures of fighting for a World Championship is not the easiest of things.

"There are drivers who have sustained a little bit then fallen back and never recovered from that mental fight that you have. He's very strong-minded and he came back and finished up strong so I anticipate he's going to be stronger next year, so I'm going to make sure I'm on my toes."