Wolff: Fairy-tale drive for Bottas

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has described Valtteri Bottas' dominant victory in Australia as a "fairy-tale", with the Finn winning his first race since 2017 at Albert Park.

Last season, Bottas was in the lead in Russia, before team orders ensured the Finnish driver gave way for his team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who was challenging for the world title - and eventually claimed his fifth world crown.

But Wolff, speaking after Bottas' victory in Australia, admitted he was delighted for his driver to finally win a race and end the drought, in a dominant display from him, from start to finish.

"Since I started work with drivers 15 years ago, I try to comprehend what is going on in their brains," Wolff explained. "How he recovered from being written off, not up for the job in the second half of the season last year to scoring one of the most dominant victories that we've seen in recent days shows us that human potential, how much it is a mind game.

"For me, it's a bit of a fairy-tale. Don't let others break you, believe in yourself, and he has shown that the whole weekend, not one single session that he wasn't good enough.

"When he left, after the Christmas party, he said he was tired and he needed to recover because it was the most shitty half of the season he has ever had, and he came back at the end of January and said: 'I'm back'."