Valtteri Bottas is aiming to repeat his victory from last year at the Yas Marina Circuit after a strong Friday showing ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport driver was fastest in Free Practice 2 after being third fastest in the morning session.
“FP2 was really good, the car felt like I could trust it and drive it the way I want,” Bottas said. “FP1 was less good, but I think that’s pretty usual here.
“The track is very green when we first go out and it’s much hotter during the day than it is in the evening session.”
Free Practice 3 takes place in the day, unlike qualifying and the race, so Bottas was pleased to be happy with the car and know what his set-up will be this weekend.
“I’m glad we got the car to work well in the evening session as it is very difficult to try out set-up changes in FP3 because it is so hot,” the Finn explained.
“We definitely learned a lot from the runs we did today, especially in the evening, and there are plenty of things we can adjust overnight to find a good set-up for qualifying and the race.”
Abu Dhabi was the scene of the Finn’s last victory and is hoping history repeats itself.
“It’s nice to be on top of the timesheets, but we now need to build on that, we need to try and make the right set-up changes and I also need to find more performance from myself.
“My goal for the weekend is to repeat last year’s result, but there’s still plenty of work to do.”
