Bottas confident new Mercedes engine undamaged

Valtteri Bottas is hopeful his upgraded Mercedes Formula 1 engine has not suffered any damage following a water leak during second practice for the French Grand Prix. 

Bottas finished behind teammate and Friday pacesetter Lewis Hamilton as Mercedes made a strong start to the first F1 grand prix weekend in France for 10 years, before the Finn encountered an issue on his W09 in FP2. 

Hamilton went on to top the second session with Bottas down in seventh after Mercedes discovered a water leak that kept Bottas in the garage for much of the final 30 minutes, meaning he failed to complete representative qualifying and race simulations. 

He said Mercedes were still investigating the problem following the conclusion of the session but remains confident his power unit will be usable for the rest of the weekend. 

“Practice two was problematic as I only got a few laps in the beginning then we had a water leak with the engine which we are still investigating,” Bottas explained. 

“It is the new spec and it definitely felt fresh but we now need to find out the cause of the water leak but I think we are still confident we can run it for the rest of the weekend which is good.”

Mercedes finally introduced its anticipated engine update on Friday in France, revealing it is a better specification than the one it originally planned to run at the Canadian Grand Prix before it was delayed due to reliability concerns. 

Bottas believes Mercedes’ new ‘phase 2.1’ engine felt “a bit better” compared to the old power unit the team ran in Canada but expects Ferrari to find more pace ahead of qualifying. 

“It felt good. We are not running it yet in full power so there is more to discover tomorrow but in normal running it felt fresh and nice and a bit better than the old one.

“We definitely looked competitive today in both sessions and Lewis got a really good lap in FP2 so I think we are going to be competitive but we’ve seen on Fridays Ferrari have been sandbagging so I think they are doing it again but let’s see for tomorrow and Sunday.”