Bottas: Mercedes sensitive to Bahrain track evolution

Valtteri Bottas says the continually changing Bahrain circuit conditions is causing Mercedes a set-up headache having lost out to Ferrari on Friday practice.

The Finnish driver is eager to bounce back from a frustrating 2018 Formula 1 season opener where he crashed in qualifying and could only reach eighth place having started a lowly 15^th for Mercedes.

Bottas ended Friday practice third fastest behind the Ferrari one-two but ahead of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton by less than one-tenth of a second and is confident of finding further time having claimed a maiden F1 pole position 12 months ago in Bahrain.

Bottas says Mercedes is needing to constantly tweak its set-up with his W09 due to track evolution which altered drastically between FP1 and FP2 with the second session held in the evening under the floodlights while the circuit gets rubbered in.

“The track improved so much from one session to the other, so we can already see from the Friday running you have more grip in every single lap,” Bottas said. “The car balance is changing, so we need to make estimations for the next sessions, the next runs and it’s going to be the same thing tomorrow.

“I think the main thing for us today was to get the softer compounds to work, as with the Supersofts we did pretty much the same time we had done with the Softs. I think we still need to find more pace, especially one lap pace with the Supersoft tyre, so there’s still work to do even though the car felt alright.”

Bottas finished third to Sebastian Vettel and Hamilton last year in Bahrain despite starting from pole position for the first time in his F1 career.