Bahrain opened Mercedes' eyes to W09 weakness - Bottas

Despite his second place finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas moves on to China aware that the weaknesses of Mercedes' W09 have been exposed.

The Silver Arrows outfit was left chasing Ferrari all weekend in the Bahrain heat, and the race Sunday evening was just another reflection of the team's lack of pace on abrasive tracks relative to its Italian rival.

"I think this weekend has really opened up our eyes in terms of how much we still have to work with the car," said Bottas.

"In certain conditions it’s really fast but like yesterday [qualifying] we could spot some weaknesses and even today.

"It’s been an important weekend, we need to make sure we keep improving what are the negatives of the car, compared to Ferrari."

• Hamilton critical of Verstappen after Bahrain clash

The Finn's thrilling battle against Sebastian Vettel in the final stages of the event saw the Mercedes driver snapping at the heels of the leader as he made the most of his medium tyres against the Ferrari's worn out soft rubber.

Bottas came close to overhauling the future winner, but not close enough.

"When you’re closing up on the car ahead and you get to the braking zones you lose quite a bit of front downforce because you’re running in turbulence, that mainly affects the front end and it’s a bit easy to lock up the front wheels," he said.

"It’s early days, but anyway it was a lot better than two weeks ago and today, the race pace we had, was actually slightly better than what we expected coming into the race, so that was positive."

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