Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport‘s Valtteri Bottas had a promising start to his Austrian Grand Prix weekend, finishing second quickest in Free Practices One and Two.
The Finn and team-mate Lewis Hamilton both received a package update for this weekend’s running, and the results look positive thus far, with Mercedes dominating both sessions.
Bottas took his second win of his Formula One career at the Red Bull Ring last season and commented that the car felt even better than it had done last year, with good rear stability.
“It’s been a good start to the weekend; we tried our new updates today and the initial feeling is that they work well,” he commented.
“The team has done a really good job delivering the updates; every single person in the team has worked really hard on them.
“It worked exactly as expected which is down to all the hard work behind the scenes. Especially the rear end of the car was really stable today. Last year I had severe blistering on the rear left tyre which could potentially be an issue again as it is going to be warmer again this Sunday. So it’s good that the rear felt stable today; however, we do still have a bit of balance work to do to get the most out of the car.”
He now turns his attention to qualifying, which, with its need for complete accuracy in the few corners it has, is exciting around the 4.318 km circuit.
“Qualifying is really exciting around this track. There are not a lot of corners, so you need to nail every single one of them in order to make it to the front row.”
