Bottas sees big gap to Verstappen: "Slightly surprising at this point"

Valtteri Bottas was very pleased with his first three hours in the car this weekend in Italy. The Mercedes driver had a big gap to the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and so an eighth pole position in a row in 2020 seems to be a formality for the Silver Arrows

"It felt pretty good all day," Bottas said to the various media at the end of his first day at the Monza circuit. However, the performance of the W11 is not quite where it should be. "I'm sure we can still improve. I would say the biggest for me was lacking rear stability in a few corners, but other than that it was pretty good."

There is more in it for Bottas

The difference between Mercedes and Red Bull Racing was quite big in both the first and second free practice sessions. "Actually, I think the performance and the lap times compared to the others is slightly surprising at this point, but, of course, we’ll see it tomorrow," said the Finnish driver. In his fastest lap of the afternoon session, there was still a lot of room for improvement. "There is always more to come, for sure. I think my lap in FP2 wasn’t that great, so also from my side there’s quite a bit more to come."