Valtteri Bottas admitted it was “a pretty boring day” as the rain affected both practice sessions on Friday ahead of the United States Grand Prix.
The Finn was second in a Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport one-two in Free Practice 1 at the Circuit of the Americas but did not run in the second session, instead deciding to save tyres with the threat of rain on Saturday.
“It was a pretty boring day, just waiting for the rain to go away,” said Bottas. “The more tyres we use today, the less tyres we have for a potentially wet Qualifying session; so we’d rather run tomorrow than today given the tyre allocation that we have.”
Despite the limited running, Bottas was very happy with how the car was feeling and is hoping the car is just as a strong in the dry.
“But even in the limited running that I was able to do this morning the car felt really good, despite the poor conditions,” he said. “It seems to be a strong car in both the wet and the dry.
With the expected lack of dry running, Bottas acknowledges it will be tough to set-up the car for the race.
“The set-up for tomorrow and Sunday will be tricky given that no one was able to run the dry tyres yet, but I guess that’s when we will see how good our simulations are as our entire set-up will have to be based on simulations and all the hard work back at the factory, but not on on-track running,” said the Finn.
“We have different tyres compared to last year, the asphalt changed as well, so there are many question marks that will make finding the right race set-up and strategy difficult.
“So even if we get a good qualifying, there are no guarantees for Sunday – which makes the weekend really interesting.”
