Valtteri Bottas has revealed he and his side of the Mercedes garage are now working on fixing his weaknesses compared to Lewis Hamilton.
The Finn has again struggled to consistently pose a threat to his teammate, having only won twice this season and only finished ahead on two other occasions.
As a result, he sits 63 points behind Hamilton in the championship with seven races to go, and Bottas knows that if he ever wants to become champion, he’s going to have to perform at his absolute best.
“In this sport, there’s so many details and things you can improve if you invest your time into that,” he said to Crash.net.
“If I want to beat Lewis for the whole season I definitely have to dig as deep as I can to not leave any stone unturned, I’m ready for that.
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“We have a good spirit now with the engineers on my side of the garage, we’re very united for me to find those gains, step by step, and find those improvements.
“They’re motivated to help me and we’ve found a nice way of working now and hopefully that will bring results in the near future.”
On several occasions this year, however, Bottas has faced criticism from Mercedes boss Toto Wolff for shortcomings in key areas versus Hamilton, the latest being coming after Monza.
“There are some occasions Lewis has done a better job on following another car and getting close quicker, being able to attack,” he conceded, echoing comments by the Austrian.
“With the team, we’ve started the process for me to try and get better on that, and looking at all the things I can learn from that, looking at videos from the past, different race situations.
“Honestly, I feel there was no way to win at Monza with the difference we had, straight-line difference, my tyres were dropping at the end,” he stated.
“Now looking back and analysing everything, for sure an area I still can improve and it’s one of the strengths of Lewis’.”