Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Smedley praises Bottas for ‘unfaltering’ progress

Williams’ Rob Smedley says he is pleased with Valtteri Bottas’ progression as a driver so far with the team.

Smedley joined Williams at the start of last season and has been able to gauge Bottas against team-mate Felipe Massa having worked with the Brazilian for a number of years at Ferrari. While Bottas missed the season-opening Australian Grand Prix with a back injury, he returned to finish fifth in Malaysia - overtaking Massa late on - and Smedley says he is impressed with how the Finn is improving.

“He’s doing a great job,” Smedley said. “I think his rate of progression has been unfaltering, really. He hasn’t really stopped developing.

“I think all racers to a certain extent are developing all the time. If I look at the Felipe from the end of 2013 to the Felipe we have now, he’s developed as well and that’s a driver with ten years’ experience or something like that. He’s still developing, they’re both developing, I don’t think we have any issues with our drivers whatsoever.

“We have two extremely competent drivers and if you’d put them in a Mercedes or a Ferrari [in Malaysia] they would have won the race.”

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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.