'I'm going to improve massively' - Bottas

Valtteri Bottas believes he is "going to improve massively" after an impressive debut for Mercedes at the Australian Grand Prix.

The Finn has struggled in the past in Melbourne and started the weekend half a second off teammate Lewis Hamilton's pace during Friday practice. However, Bottas reduced the deficit to 0.3s in qualifying and then crossed the line just 1.2s behind Hamilton after closing in during the second half of the race.

When it was put to Bottas that Mercedes chairman Niki Lauda had said he is already at Nico Rosberg's level of performance, the Finn replied: "That's good! It's difficult to compare, but if he's saying that, it's nice. There's a lot more to come from me, it's only the first race – I'm going to improve massively, but that's nice.

"As a driver, you can always find things you can improve for the next race and for the future. I wasn't quite happy with qualifying, because I set the target very high and I didn't meet it. But that's where you learn.

"In the race the car was feeling much better with the soft tire, so the main thing for us to understand why, with the ultrasoft at the beginning, they were overheating and we were sliding around, missing grip. Overall it was a good start with the team, as we didn't have a lot of time to prepare everything for this race. We have to continue from here."

Despite showing an impressive level of improvement through the opening weekend, Bottas says he will retain a very self-critical approach as he doesn't feel it hurts him.

"For sure I always set very high targets for myself and that works for me – it makes me work harder and, at least this weekend, I didn't feel any negatives from my self-criticism. It's only good for me to think about my weaknesses and strengths, so I'm not worried about that.

"I think that in general the weekend didn't always go the ideal way, but leaving this weekend I think it was a decent start with the team and a completely new page in my career. I know there's so much more to come and I just need to keep on doing what I'm doing and everything will be OK. I trust my skills, so I don't see it as a worry."