15/09/2017
NEWS STORY
Buoyed by his new contract with Mercedes, Valtteri Bottas insists he is not playing second fiddle to teammate Lewis Hamilton.
While the new deal, announced on Wednesday, is for one year, the Finn aims to make the most of it, aware that the myriad of driver (and engine) changes in 2018 could open up all manner of possibilities for 2019 and beyond.
Indeed, though 41 points behind championship leader Hamilton, Bottas believes he can still fight for the title and is not yet prepared to play back-up to his illustrious teammate.
"Anything in Formula One is always possible with seven races to go," the Finn told reporters as the Singapore weekend got underway.
"But I definitely need to start finishing ahead of Lewis and Sebastian if I want to keep my title hopes alive, and rather sooner than later," he admitted.
"I'm not here to finish third. I want to be fighting for the title as long as there are possibilities for that. I really want to make the most out of the end of the year and I always set my targets very high, so third is not one of them."
With that in mind however, and looking beyond 2018, Bottas, aware that Mercedes is likely to be the team to beat for the foreseeable future would like to retain his current berth.
"The team always wants to have options open for the future, I understand 100 percent," he said. "But I'm very happy with this, it's still better than the original contract that I had.
"As always with my career in F1, it's going to be completely up to me. If I perform well, there's no problem and we can have a long future together."
Check out our Friday gallery from Singapore, here.