Bottas taking more active role in future talks

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Valtteri Bottas says he is taking a more active role in talks regarding his future as his Williams seat remains uncertain.

Now in his fourth season with the team, the Finn has impressed at Williams but it has been made clear both he and Felipe Massa are out of contract at the end of the year. Bottas says he wants to be more involved in talks with the likes of deputy team principal Claire Williams, but insists he has the same management line-up of Toto Wolff, Didier Coton and Mika Hakkinen.

"So nothing has changed in terms of my management, everything is still the same," Bottas said. "Nothing has changed with that I just want to be a little bit more involved because I’m interested."

When asked if it was because he hadn't been happy with not getting the right deal at some stage in his career so far, Bottas replied: "No, I wouldn’t say that.

"I would say I’m just very interested of my own future, still I have Toto, Mika, Didi behind me, I have all the support from them and all the help from them.

"It’s not worth overreacting and making a story of it. I just want to be more involved and I think it’s quite handy if I speak with Claire or anyone, it’s quite simple."

And Bottas says he feels more in control of his own future as he waits for Williams to make a decision regarding its driver line-up next season.

"I feel comfortable, time will show what’s going to happen, but like I said everything is still a bit frozen. There has been no decision made by Williams I would guess. But we will need to wait and see."

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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.