Bottas: "That's not one of the strengths of our package"

Judging from the first Grand Prix of the season the battle between Mercedes and Red Bull Racing will be fiercer than ever this year. The team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez seem to have the best cards up their sleeves because of the build of their car, but Mercedes should never be underestimated. For Valtteri Bottas, it is clear where the strengths and weaknesses lie.

The Finn looks back on his first race of the year at Thursday's press conference and says it was certainly not a perfect race. The result - apart from the win for Hamilton - is not what the team had set itself as a target. Mercedes started the year well with a fast car, but there is still a lot of work to be done to compete with Red Bull.

Bottas quoted by Motorsport-Total.com: "It seems that Red Bull are quite strong, especially in the faster corners. Other than that, there are only small differences here and there." But those could be just the decisive differences that cause Mercedes to lose out. What doesn't help is the weak rear of the W12, about which Bottas says: "That's not one of the strengths of our package, not at this point in the season. We've already addressed that and we're working on that."

Bottas also says that the new Mercedes has a lot of potential, but that not everything has been shown yet. This is because it has only been driven in Bahrain, where of course the situation differs from circuit to circuit. "Imola is different, there for example the tyres don't overheat as quickly," which can be to Mercedes' advantage. "We are curious to see how the car feels here. We also have some improvements on it and hopefully it will go better with that."

This also makes for a slightly different perspective on the races, Bottas previously hinted that they are now the hunters rather than the hunted.