Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Staying at Williams the best choice, says Bottas

Valtteri Bottas has insisted that staying at Williams F1 in 2016 was never a case of having to settle for second best.

The Finn had been widely linked with a move to Ferrari to take over from his compatriot Kimi Raikkonen, but the speculation in the paddock is that Williams wanted too much compensation from Maranello to let Bottas out of his existing commitments with the team.

Instead, Bottas has signed a contract extension that will keep him with the British squad in 2016, and he said he was pleased that the matter had been resolved and that he would be staying put next season.

"I think this is the best place for me at the moment and continuity will be good for us, particularly as I'll have the same team mate in Felipe Massa," Bottas wrote in his blog for the Williams F1 website.

"Together we have a good baseline and we can work together to get even better results," he added. "We can now start working on the development of next year's car and share all the information needed without any doubts.

"It's good to have the new contract signed and know what I'm going to be doing next year. At least there's no more speculation and the team and myself can focus on the job of making the car quicker and delivering the results."

Bottas insisted that the will-he, won't-he rumours over his future during the summer hadn't caused any friction with the team.

"Our relationship wasn't damaged at all," he said. "But that can happen if people think you are looking to leave a team. No damage has been done and I'm very happy to stay with the team, and they are very happy to keep me as well.

"I get along with every single person at Williams and we have developed a very good working relationship over the years."

Deputy team principal Clare Williams said last week that the team never really had any interest in allowing Ferrari to buy up Bottas' option, even if it had come with the rumoured 12 million euro fee.

"I don’t think you can put a price tag on someone like Valtteri. Valtteri is such an integral part of the transformation here, he’s been with the team for six years now, everyone knows the talent that he has," she said.

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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.