Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver Valtteri Bottas says that the squad cannot rest on their laurels and believe they have the championship fight in the bag, despite having won every race since the Monaco Grand Prix.
The Finn believes that the last few tracks have favoured the W08 package more than that of rivals Scuderia Ferrari, as they have been very high speed, but when it comes to slower, less grippy tracks, like the Hungaroring in Budapest where they will visit next, Bottas says the German squad are unlikely to perform as well.
“We can’t get that kind of thing into our minds that we are quicker. We don’t want to do that, we want to be feeling on our back foot.
“We want to be able to improve the car and we know it is very track specific. That’s a fact because we’ve had quite high-speed circuits now the last two races.
“Baku is a special one, but the next race in Budapest is completely different. It’s very slow speed corners, really high temperatures, so we are not going too confident to there.”
It is this track-based performance that the Finn believes is keeping the title fight alive this year, and will always allow Ferrari to step back into the fray, meaning Mercedes cannot rest and must keep progressing and developing all season long to ensure the title is theirs.
“We know that we still have work to do and plenty of things we need to improve on. We can improve during this year still.
“I think it is still track specific and we are still going to see good fights depending on the tracks.”
Mercedes currently have a fifty-five point lead over Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, whilst Sebastian Vettel leads Lewis Hamilton by just one solitary point in the driver’s championship.
Bottas sits just twenty-three points adrift of the German, despite suffering a DNF in Spain, but is on somewhat of a charge having scored the most points of any driver in the last four races, which includes three, second places and a win in Austria.
