Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have undergone a Mercedes W12 chassis change for this weekend's French Grand Prix that the Finn said was "always planned".
Chassis #4, which was assigned to Bottas last time out in Baku where he finished a lowly P12, has been handed to Hamilton at Paul Ricard while the Finn will be running onboard chassis #6 which the seven-time world champion has used since the start of the season.
"It’s not a new chassis," insisted Bottas. "It’s different and it was always planned for me to change to a different chassis at this point."
The 31-year-old undergoes his third chassis change of the season, having first changed cars after his high-speed crash with George Russell in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.
With F1's return to traditional circuits, Bottas is looking to improve on his low-key performance in Baku.
"We saw that in Monaco, for me, I managed to find the set-up and the confidence and get the tyres to work and Lewis didn’t. It almost felt like vice-versa in Baku," he said in France.
"I think our car is quite on a knife-edge on those kind of tracks.
"But I think at least the next few tracks it’s a bit more normal and hopefully we can get a reasonable set-up and and that it’s not that easy to to go into the wrong direction."
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