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Bottas thinks Mercedes will be able to catch Ferrari over the season

Bottas thinks Mercedes will be able to catch Ferrari over the season

07-03-2019 15:30 Last update: 15:33
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Bobby Vincent

Valtteri Bottas believes his team and current world champions, Mercedes, will be able to catch Ferrari over a long season. Bottas is convinced Ferrari remain the team to beat.

Sebastian Vettel recorded the fastest time in pre-season testing in Barcelona and Mercedes have come out to the press and revealed that Ferrari are the quicker team heading into the season opener in Australia.

Last season, Scuderia had the quicker engine for the first half of the season, but with some problems the Italians faced - individually and as a team, the dominant Mercedes caught them up and won convincingly in the end.

READ: Ferrari would be "completely wrong" to think they're quicker than Mercedes

It looks like a similar problem Mercedes face now, but their driver Bottas believes they will be able to catch Ferrari over the course of the season.

"The package we had here has been developed for a long time - like the first package - but it was not like after the first week we realised we need to change something and brought something new," Bottas said to Crash.net on its new aerodynamic package.

"It was well planned a long time ago, and I'm sure we'll try to bring some improvements for Melbourne as well.

"I feel that with the regulation changes, even though it's not massive, how complex the cars are aerodynamically, from the start of the season to the end of the year, I think we're going to see bigger improvements from each team compared to last year.

"It's a long season ahead and if we make the right decision with the development path then we're going to be strong," the Finn continued. "But everyone is only guessing at this point."