Bottas: “The Mercedes W11 is more balanced”

Valtteri Bottas was optimistic after the first week of winter testing F1. The pilot Mercedes established the best time of the first three days of testing with a lap of the Catalunya circuit completed in 1'15''732, ahead of his teammate by almost 8 tenths Lewis Hamilton on a track where he took an undisputed pole last year.

With 4 victories won last year, Valtteri Bottas had difficulty facing Lewis Hamilton who won 11 times. The Finn hopes to see things evolve to his advantage with the new Silver Arrow.

“I would say that the Mercedes W11 is more balanced than its predecessor, especially at the rear end. It really seems more stablehe said. We are still discovering things about the settings to see if we can gain some compared to last year. The car is also more balanced between high and low speeds, but it's still too early to say more at this stage. In any case, there are no real negative points compared to last season's car. »

IF Mercedes F1 was the most diligent team on track during the first week of testing in Barcelona with 494 laps covered, Valtteri Bottas believes that the current format of winter tests is conducive to the teams' work while they have two days less.

“It was a good riding time, he explained. We could do a lot of things and had time to catch up if a problem arose. With only 6 days, the opportunities to test different things are more limited, especially if you run into problems. But cars are becoming more and more reliable from the outset thanks to simulation tools and technological progress and I still think that it is a good current format. Maybe we could do even less testing in the future, but I think 6 days of testing is a pretty good format at the moment. »

Valtteri Bottas will still have the second week of testing to refine his sensations on the new Mercedes W11, including Two-Axis Management worries competing teams.

Discover the analysis of the first week of winter testing carried out by our special correspondents in AUTO issue 2256hebdo, available now in digital version on all platforms, and on newsstands this Wednesday. Also find the AUTO F1 Guidehebdo always available.