Williams drivers Valtteri Bottas and teammate Pastor Maldonado are yet to score a point in the F1 season to date, however the rookie believes that he’s ?more or less? matched his teammate.
Maldonado is in his third season with Williams, and that it itself points to greater experience but despite admitting to some disappointment at the car not being as fast as hoped the 23-year-old is happy with his learning curve to date.
Bottas told the official F1 website: ‘I think my performances relative to Pastor (Maldonado) have been pretty good. Pastor is experienced – it’s already his third year at Williams – and I would say that I match him more-or-less.
‘I can’t really point at one particular thing that I’ve learned from him, but of course you pick up things, especially at a track like Monaco that I didn’t know before this season. I was reading his data very carefully to see how he was doing it.
‘I am enjoying my rookie season very much. The car has not been as quick as we hoped, but that hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm. In any circumstance you want to do your best, no matter how good the car is. Sure, it’s been a tough start, but that only inspires you to work harder.’
The step up from GP3 and GP2 is quite a vast one and the Finn admits as much with him stating that the race lengths has been the ?toughest thing to adapt to? as GP3, where Bottas was Champion in 2011, and GP2 are much shorter so better strategic planning is required.
Having qualified ahead of his experienced teammate in four of his first six races, that is impressive enough but to have also finished ahead of him in four of these six Grand Prix adds further weight to Bottas’ thoughts to be fair.
Next step is actually collecting some points, if he and his teammate Maldonado can do that and Bottas continues to be ahead of him then there can be little doubt that he’s not only matched, but would have bettered him!
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