Bottas: Tyres won't decide title battle with Ferrari

Valtteri Bottas believes tyre management will subside to let outright performance define the outcome of the battle between Mercedes and Ferrari this year.

Ferrari has achieved a meaningful step forward this season, with Sebastian Vettel leading the championship after four rounds with two wins against two shared by Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

The Scuderia's SF70H has not only shown impressive speed but also the ability to better exploit its tyres compared to the German outfit's rubber-consuming W08.

But Bottas believes teams are still in learning mode with regard to Pirelli's 2017 compounds, and that more knowledge will  help extract better performance from the new-spec cars.

"It's more difficult to master every compound for every tarmac, and how they behave," Bottas said in a an interview with Motorpsort.com.

"I think it's been always in F1 like that, but now that our car with Ferrari is so equal then small things like tyres [can decide the outcome].

"In the end it's the only thing in contact with the car and the ground. But my thinking in the future is it's going to be less and less speaking about the tyres.

"Once people and teams learn more about getting everything out of the tyres in the right windows in different conditions, then I think probably everyone is going to be equal in how they handle tyres.

"So there is going to be less speaking about tyres and it's going to be more about the cars, and setups and car development."

Bottas praises Ferrari for its level of performance this year and its mastering of Pirelli's compounds, believing that value has also been added to Formula 1's spectacle.

"They are managing their tyres at every single track on every Sunday and they've been very much on top of every compound of tyres.

"They've done very good job on that. And I think it's a very good challenge to try and beat them.

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