Bottas: Target is to win and not think on future

Valtteri Bottas says his focus for the 2018 Formula 1 season is simply “to win as many races as I can” and let his Mercedes future be decided by his results.

Having secured a one-year contract extension at Mercedes for the new campaign, Bottas faces a make or break year to secure his long-term future at the German manufacturer with Mercedes youngsters Esteban Ocon and Pascal Wehrlein looking to climb the ranks.

With Daniel Ricciardo’s future also unconfirmed beyond this season with the Australian hunting a title-contending package for 2019, Bottas is aware he holds on the most hotly-contested race seats on the F1 grid after being the 11^th-hour replacement for Nico Rosberg after his shock retirement at the end of 2016.

Bottas says he isn’t thinking about his long-term future at Mercedes yet and wants to concentrate on producing best results in the opening rounds of the 2018 season to be a title fighter.

“The best thing for me is to win many races, as many as I can, and that’s going to be the target,” Bottas said. “I’m going to go into every weekend trying to be at my best, trying to use everything that I have learned, trying to perform at a good level and that means trying to battle with Hamilton, trying to beat him – that’s my job. That’s it, it’s very straightforward.

“How to do it? Of course, there are multiple things I can do, there are still areas where I can improve and I need to work on those.

“I need to trust myself, go flat out and that’s all I can do and not to think about too much.”

Last year Bottas finished a distant third place behind F1 champion and teammate Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel but enjoyed a strong end to the year with two pole positions and a race win in the final two rounds.