Bottas encouraged by Williams pace in night practice

Valtteri Bottas says he was pleased to see Williams fare better in the second free practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix, which took place in more representative conditions for the race.

The Finn was a quiet 12^th in the early afternoon running but rose to eighth quickest in the evening while also completing 39 laps. With Sunday’s contest set to be run after sunset, Bottas takes encouragement from Williams’ race pace under the floodlights.

“It’s never easy to read the times on Friday but for sure our car was better in the evening and that’s what maters this weekend,” the 26-year-old said. “I’m sure we can still improve a lot but what was positive was that the long runs were very consistent. Our race pace was not so good in Melbourne but hopefully it will be better here.”

“We’ve got a pretty good idea of how the car is and we’ve got a lot of data to go through tonight. We managed to try all the tyre compounds and that was good. We just need to learn from it and I’m sure we can do better [on Saturday] at 6pm and also on Sunday at 6pm.”

Despite a productive Friday, Bottas still finished nearly 1.8s adrift of Nico Rosberg’s FP2 benchmark. The Finn, who said ahead of the 2016 campaign that Williams was ripe to taste victory again, admits Mercedes are in a league of their own at the moment.

“They’ve done a great job and they deserve to be this far ahead. We are a bit of a smaller team and we want to win, but at this stage of the season, in normal conditions, it seems impossible. We just need to keep working and improving the car because it’s still very early in the season.

“I would say the gap was surprisingly small in Melbourne and now it’s maybe how it should be, but let’s see [on Saturday]. Maybe Ferrari still has something up its sleeve and I’m sure we can still improve a lot.”

Williams plans on testing a new short nose on Saturday in Sakhir, though only Bottas' team-mate Felipe Massa will be given the opportunity to sample the upgrade.

REPORT: Rosberg heads Hamilton and Button in FP2

AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix FP2

Romain Grosjean's exclusive F1i column - Bahrain

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