Bottas “pretty clear” on improvements needed to beat Hamilton

Valtteri Bottas says he has some “pretty clear” ideas on where he needs to improve in order to beat Mercedes Formula 1 teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Bottas led the championship for the first time in his F1 career after claiming two wins from the opening four races, but Hamilton responded by taking four victories from the following five races to open up a 31-point lead over the Finn at the top of the drivers’ standings.

Adding to his run of fine form, Hamilton has not been out-qualified by Bottas since May’s Spanish Grand Prix. But heading into this weekend’s British Grand Prix, Bottas said he has identified a number of key areas to work on.

“It’s pretty clear on the data and we’ve been able to work pretty well on that with the engineers,” Bottas said.

“Again, coming to this weekend, there are very clear main points I need to focus on.

“It’s been a bit of a trend in most places that Lewis has been normally quite strong on slow corners, on braking and entry speed, also his driving style aids in some cases with set-up directions, to improve the life of the tyres in the race.

“It’s still work in progress for me, in getting better in everything. But these things depend. We have data from last year, from qualifying and the race, and it’s very clear where I need to get better if I want to fight for the win.

“With the data we have available now, it’s accessible and it’s quite easy to pinpoint everything, the hardest part is actually getting to do everything you need to do once in the car.”

Asked if he thinks a new track surface could play into his hands, Bottas replied: “We think it’s going to be pretty high grip, especially with a decent development of the track during the weekend, it’s going to keep getting better.

“I think it was done by the same company that did Barcelona’s resurfacing a couple of years back and that was pretty grippy.

“Hopefully it will be less bumpy than last year, because I got a pretty good eyeball massage the whole weekend. We’ll see as we go on Friday.”