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Bottas: 'tow' not the answer to mastering Baku

Despite being one of the fastest men on track in Baku in free practice for the Grand Prix of Europe on Friday, Williams' Valtteri Bottas said that finding a 'tow' from a car in front wasn't the answer to mastering Formula One's newest circuit.

Bottas was clocked at 351kph coming down the two kilometre straight at one point, but he admitted that this had been with the help of a slipstream from a car ahead of him on the track.

"Yes, I did get a bit of a tow, but we are still to run the engine qualifying modes. It is a fast circuit, especially the corners leading to the main straight are pretty cool."

However, asked if he thought he or the other dreams might try and plan a similar slipstream boost in qualifying, Bottas said that he wasn't expecting it.

"Maybe, but I doubt we’ll do it," he responded. "A tow seems to make a big difference but it also ruin your lap in sector 2, I’ve always preferred not to play with that too much, keep it simple and do the best lap time you can with the car you have."

Bottas ending the day in fourth place in FP2 and said that there was more still to come from Williams during the weekend.

"I think we can be reasonably strong here," he said. "Today was a good day but we can find a lot more from the car and also from me.

"I always enjoy learning new circuits, I really finding all the secrets little by little, corner by corner. It was good fun, I really enjoyed it but the track will still improve a lot, we still have work a lot on the balance of the car, and I can still some more lap time in me. I think it can be a good weekend for us but, of course, we need to work hard.

"We really need to improve for tomorrow because everyone else will. We still have a lot of work to do with the set-up of the car, I’m not entirely satisfied with the balance we have, with the handling, so we’ll have to see tomorrow.

"I’m sure it’s going to be a lot closer tomorrow than what we’ve seen today. The track will evolve a lot and both the team and the driver will have to keep up with that evolution."

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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.