Valtteri Bottas said that Friday at the Hungarian Grand Prix was “not an easy day” for his Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport team.
The Finnish driver was sixth fastest in both sessions but over a second slower than Sebastian Vettel in the afternoon and admitted the car was “difficult to drive.”
“Today was not an easy day; the car was difficult to drive and I struggled to get laps together, especially in FP1.
“We managed to improve the set-up for FP2, but there’s still more work to do.”
The Hungaroring is a difficult circuit to get the set-up right at and Bottas feels more work is required to get the Mercedes where he wants it.
“This is a difficult circuit, you need to have a well-balanced car in order to get all the corners right and we need to get the car more stable.
“The wind direction is forecast to change for tomorrow, so we need to count that in as well.
“We struggled to get the UltraSoft compound tyres working consistently and had some issues with overheating.”
Qualifying is very important in Hungary and Bottas knows that it will be close between them, Scuderia Ferrari and the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing cars.
“It is difficult to overtake here, so track position is very important and the less stops you can do is always going to be better.
“Red Bull and Ferrari are as quick as we expected; I think it’s going to be very close.”
