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Williams can catch Mercedes - Bottas

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Valtteri Bottas says there is still enough time for Williams to close the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari this season.

Williams ended 2014 as the closest challenger to Mercedes - with Felipe Massa nearly winning in Abu Dhabi - but has seen Ferrari become the biggest threat to the defending champions this year. Bottas says there are key areas Williams must improve but is taking inspiration from last year's development program and is confident the deficit isn't insurmountable.

"I think aerodynamics is the main thing and anything we can mechanically improve with the car we are looking at," Bottas said. "All the time I think there is good progress being made in the wind tunnel and I am sure there will be some updates for Barcelona as for everyone I guess, but hopefully we can really close the gap.

"It is still a long way to go until the end of the season and the rate we improved last year was good. I am still hopeful there is enough time to get really close to them."

And Bottas says Williams should not get too disheartened by being the third quickest team this year, highlighting how the team has matched Mercedes over the winter.

"I suppose we are not happy. We wanted to be higher. We wanted to close the gap to Mercedes and at least be the second best team at the beginning of the season. But it is really clear Ferrari has made a big step with its PU and also with its car. I don’t think we have fallen back. I think Ferrari has just improved massively. Our gap to Mercedes is more or less the same as last year."

Click here for a look at the brake-by-wire system which caused Mercedes problems in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.