Bottas will be a team player if asked

Valtteri Bottas insists he will help teammate Lewis Hamilton fight for the drivers' championship if asked by Mercedes, but is not writing off his own hopes yet.

Hamilton's victory in the Italian Grand Prix saw the Briton move into the lead in the drivers' championship, opening up a three-point gap over Sebastian Vettel. Bottas finished second to his teammate and dropped 41 points off the championship lead as a result, and the Finn says he will help Hamilton where requested but still feels his own performances can prevent such a scenario.

"It is up to me also, really – if I perform well, if I manage to qualify well, have strong pace, for sure I can still fight for the wins," Bottas said. "But if it is going to be the case that for some reason I'm missing pace, if Lewis is doing a better job, me running in P2, and clearly behind then it's obviously better to help than try something silly.

"I'm always going to be a team player and it is up to the team to decide these kind of things, so we'll see. We'll go race by race and by every situation, but like I said it is also a lot up to me. I need to perform if I still want to fight for the title."

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Bottas highlighted his qualifying performances as an area he will need to improve if he wants to remain in the title hunt, having started from fourth in Monza while Hamilton took pole position.

"I think starting fourth, ending up second and for us as a team ending with a 1-2 is a really good day. For me, the race win I think I lost in the qualifying. The pace between me and Lewis [in the race], not much difference. In similar cars, similar pace, whoever is ahead in the beginning of the race without any drama, that's going to be the finishing order.

"I just need to try and improve my qualifying, try to be stronger in the qualifying in Singapore so hopefully that way I can fight for the win. Pretty much the gap we had with Lewis when I got through the cars ahead, it stayed more or less the same towards the end of the race."

Since retiring from the Spanish Grand Prix in May, Bottas has scored 134 points, six fewer than Hamilton and three more than Vettel has managed over the same period.