Bottas upbeat after first taste of new 2017 car

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Valtteri Bottas looked happy after his first outing in the new Mercedes-AMG F1 W08 Power+ at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Bottas completed 79 laps in the car on Monday morning on the first of four days of pre-season testing taking place this week in Spain.

"It was very good for the first morning," said Bottas, who moved from Williams to join the team over the winter after the shock retirement of world champion Nico Rosberg at the end of 2016.

"Very different to last year, I have to say," he added. "Definitely feel with the new regulations the increased loads and bigger car, more grip."

"Obviously it's a completely different car anyway, different from the Williams - behaving slightly differently. But it's still a car with four wheels, and an engine and a steering wheel.

Bottas: "I'm ready to take pole position at Mercedes!"

"Everything was running very smoothly. First time on track today with the car, it’s a very good start.

"We had zero problems on the engine side or with the car mechanically or aerodynamically, so everything was running smoothly, checking the systems.

"The feeling was nice, good to feel the extra downforce. I’ve never driven a car with that much downforce, that’s for sure."

After setting a best lap time of 1:23.169s in the morning, Bottas handed over the car to his team mate Lewis Hamilton for the afternoon stint.

The situation is reversed on Tuesday, with Hamilton due to run in the morning and Bottas back in the car again, this time for the afternoon stint.

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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.