Bottas: Switching teams was harder than expected

Valtteri Bottas admits switching from Williams to Mercedes at relatively late notice this winter was a bigger challenge than he had originally expected.

Following Nico Rosberg's shock retirement at the end of 2016, Mercedes turned to Bottas to replace the reigning drivers' champion but was only able to compete a deal in late January. Despite only having one month to settle into the team before the start of pre-season testing, Bottas impressed and set the fastest time of the week while also completing the most mileage of any driver.

Even with such a strong start to life at Mercedes, Bottas says there is plenty he wants to work on having been surprised by what a difference moving teams makes.

"I definitively feel more comfortable and more part of the team every day, I already feel good," Bottas said. "For example, getting in this morning and having breakfast here it already felt normal, so that's a good feeling. But there's definitively a big difference compared to last week, because this was the first proper time of working as unit, as a team, on track, with the engineers, finding performance, and I learned very much from it every day.

"I still think there's work to do, as changing teams is maybe a slightly bigger thing than I initially thought it would be. But it's not a hurdle than you cannot go over, I think it's definitively something that I can do and I've been working flat out since the announcement to get comfortable with everything.

"That's why everything has run, so far, quite smoothly here and I'm sure next week we'll make big progress and still for Melbourne I'll have tome to go back to the factory, analyze everything and I'm confident we're going to be ready and I'll be completely part of the team before Melbourne."

Mercedes ended the test with a few reliability worries after Lewis Hamilton failed to run on the final morning due to an electrical fault. Bottas still managed significant mileage in the afternoon, however, and said it was the most productive test he has been involved in during his Formula 1 career to date.

"I think that during the two days of running I did – in four half days – I definitely did more laps than I've ever done and that's very nice and very useful in this new era of Formula 1, with the new type of cars and, for me, with a new team.

"For me, any track time is beneficial and, like I said, I learned a lot from this running, and I'll be working together with the team on all the details. So it was a very good test – overall, the best ever for me."