Valtteri Bottas completed a total of 71 laps over the first day of practice at the Brazilian Grand Prix, finishing sixth in the first session and topping the times in the second.
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport driver was happy with the progress made throughout the day, despite making a few mistakes.
“It was a bit of a mixed day; Free Practice 2 was much better than Free Practice 1.” said Bottas. “The morning was quite difficult, it was easy to make mistakes.
“I had a few lockups and aborted laps, so it was difficult to build a good rhythm. But we really improved the car for the afternoon and I managed to find a rhythm.
While team-mate Lewis Hamilton was running a mixture of soft and Supersoft tyres in the second session, Bottas chose the Medium compound to pair with the Supersoft.
“The pace seemed to be good, but it is a short track, so the margins are small. There was not a lot of tyre drop-off today, but we’re expecting warmer temperatures, so we will have to wait and see if that might bring about some issues.”
Track temperatures reached 39°C at one point in the day, but the dry weather could make way for rain on the second day.
“It looks like it might rain tomorrow, but we’ve had a good package in the wet all year, so I don’t think that would be a big problem for us.
“It is very close between the top three teams, so we can’t feel satisfied about our results today; we know everyone else is going to be working on their performance overnight, so we will have to keep pushing as well.”
