Bottas boosted by Suzuka return to form

Valtteri Bottas admits his confidence has been helped by a strong race weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix after struggling for pace in recent races.

The Finn was well off the pace of teammate Lewis Hamilton in both Singapore and Malaysia, leading him to concede he was lacking confidence in the car, a situation which was hurting his performance. After qualifying second but starting sixth due to a grid penalty, Bottas delivered a strong drive to fourth place and missed out on a podium by less than a second at Suzuka.

Related Stories

"I think from the last few weekends I've definitely learned a lot," Bottas said. "I think I managed to perform in a better way this weekend, controlling some of the issues I've had before. I think my performance was better.

"I think this track normally can be very difficult to manage the tires and manage the overheating, and setting up the car can be tricky. I think in every way this weekend was pretty decent. Without the grid penalty, I should have been in a good position.

"I think pace-wise it was a strong race for me, especially in the second stint. I had a good pace and had the quickest lap of the race, so definitely feeling better after this race than the last one. I'm looking forward to Austin.

"Definitely [the car] felt better. Of course it's not easy to come to this weekend after so many difficulties, but I just had to try and reset somehow and approach the weekend as normal. This weekend, seeing at times I've had really, really good pace, and thanks to all the support from the team. I feel much more confident now than after Malaysia."

Bottas led at one stage of Sunday's race but moved over for Hamilton (below) when his teammate closed in, and the Finn says he had no problem with following team orders despite it potentially costing him a podium finish.

"For me, there was not a lot [of discussion]. Maybe internally there was more. They just told me when to do it, really, and I kind of got the point – I understood completely the situation. Without the gearbox penalty we had, we would not have been in this situation.

"For sure it was not ideal for both of us – he lost time and I think I lost quite a few seconds at that point as well, which would have helped me massively at the end of the race. So for sure we will look into everything if it could have been done better, but I understood the situation."