Bottas believes he will be a 'much more complete, much quicker' driver in 2018

Valtteri Bottas has admitted that he suffered from a crisis of confidence at points during his maiden season with Mercedes, but assured fans that he expects to be a 'much more complete, much quicker' driver in the upcoming 2018 campaign than he was last term.

Nico Rosberg won the world championship in Formula in 2016, only to announce his shock retirement not long after which meant Mercedes were forced to quickly find a new driver to partner Lewis Hamilton for the 2017 season.

Bottas was eventually selected, but his first season was a mixed bag as although he won a few Grand Prix races, he never looked like a contender for the driver's championship. The Finn has confessed that the negative parts of the season left him questioning himself.

"After struggling quite a lot for a couple of races, it wasn't easy mentally because I was quite confused in the beginning - like, 'what's going on?'," Bottas told Autosport.

"For sure you also start to doubt what you're doing.

"Then also when you need to change some things with your driving style and need to adapt to many different things suddenly you realise it's not that simple. Then you easily overthink things and then it becomes less natural driving.

"But it's going to a much better direction. If there's going to be similar struggles [in 2018] I'm prepared for that. And I've learnt massively from those difficult races so I think I'm a lot better driver as well than for example in Spa or Malaysia or Japan."

When Bottas was starting with Mercedes, new regulations were being implemented on the engines, but he thinks Hamilton was still more accustomed to the Silver Arrows vehicle which was a huge factor in the gap between the team-mates in the rankings.

"What he's been doing better than me, I think it comes mainly from experience," said Bottas, who reiterated the 'definite difference' in styles between he and Hamilton.

"I think ultimately mechanically the car hasn't really changed much from the last few years, in terms of how it behaves, and it was very different how the Williams car behaved.

"So there's been many things for me to learn, and I've been kind of catching up on things all the time."

He believes that now he has a season under his belt with Mercedes he will be "a much more complete, much quicker driver on average."