Lack of Bottas deal surprises Force India's Szafnauer

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Force India's Otmar Szafnauer says he is surprised Valtteri Bottas has yet to sign a new deal with Williams for next season.

Both Bottas and team-mate Felipe Massa are out of contract at the end of the year, with Massa having last week announced he will retire from F1 at the end of 2016. Williams now has a seat to fill and missed out on Jenson Button, who will not race in 2017 as he remains at McLaren, leaving F3 championship leader Lance Stroll as the favourite for the drive.

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With speculation over Sergio Perez's future ongoing despite the Mexican having a contract, when asked if it is important Force India confirms next year's line-up to avoid any distraction in the fight against Williams, Szafnauer told F1i he expected Bottas to have been confirmed by now.

“Well with us both of [the Force India drivers] are signed up for next year, so you do that separate from the racing anyway," chief operating officer Szafnauer said.

"Maybe it has an impact on the drivers that are there [at Williams], I’m surprised Bottas isn’t secured… I don’t know, but I imagine if they take Stroll then they will probably want Bottas.”

Asked if Force India is paying attention to what other teams are doing in the paddock, Szafnauer replied: “Yeah, I mean you look at everything.

"To make a good decision you need good information, so you look around and see what information you can garner before you make those decisions.

“The year off kind of surprised me. My personal opinion was I thought McLaren would choose [Stoffel] Vandoorne but I think that’s a clever move to have Jenson in the wings in case they need him.”

Button himself said he had a lot of offers to continue racing in F1 from other teams and when asked if Force India was one such team to show an interest, Szafnauer admitted: “We always have to know what is out there and what is going on…”

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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.