Bottas: New cars, new driving style

Editor

Valtteri Bottas has been forced to adapt his driving style in order to get the most out of Formula 1’s new generation of cars.

This season the sport has embraced a host of new aerodynamic regulations, which have increased downforce and mechanical grip.

Wider tyres and wings have led to faster cars with Kimi Raikkonen’s pace-setting time from pre-season testing, a 1:18.634, 3.3s faster than Lewis Hamilton’s pole position time from the 2016 Spanish GP.

“I’ve definitively needed to adapt some things on my driving style, take slightly different lines and use slightly different driving techniques,” Bottas told ESPN.

“It’s not just because it’s a different car with more grip. Mechanically it behaves a bit differently, which takes a bit of time if you want to get absolutely everything out of the car.

“But I feel I’ve learned massively, I feel I can extract more and more about the car, but there’s still more to come, for sure.”