Valtteri Bottas says he is using his "difficult weekends" to improve and understand what needs changing to achieve his goals, following a run of lacklustre performaces which have seen him fail to get within half a second of his team-mate in qualifying.
Bottas went into the summer break as a strong title contender but has since struggled to match Lewis Hamilton in the sister Mercedes, finishing on the podium just twice in four races, whereas Hamilton has secured three victories and a second place.
Bottas, although admitting the feeling wasn't positive after his Malaysian result where he finished fifth, insists he is learning from his 'off' weekends and believes the changes he needs to make are only "small things".
"The only thing I want to do is to perform and to try and meet my goals what I set for me personally," said the Finn. "I definitely haven’t been achieving those lately, so that’s why the feeling wasn’t so positive after the race.
"Some things with the driving style always makes a difference and to understand those, you always kind of need that bad weekend to learn from it – otherwise you don’t know these differences.
"It’s not massive things, it’s small things but this sport is all about details and changing some things in your own driving, then it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge and then that way the driving maybe doesn’t feel quite natural at times – but that’s how it is.
"I see things positive because I think from all those difficult weekends we’ve had there’s been so much to learn from, so much to get better from. We’ve been trying to work out every single detail with the engineers and trying to understand, so I’ve learned massively again from last weekend. That’s why there’s always a positive."
Bottas is also hoping to learn from his team-mate and how Hamilton manages to extract performance even when the car doesn't suit a particular circuit.
"I think the compromises we’ve been needing to do in some circuits to get it into the right window has been quite a challenge sometimes to drive around. I think Lewis has been able to extract a little bit more sometimes with a more tricky setup.
"From every team-mate you can always learn something. From every single one. From every circuit there’s always a thing or two you can pick up, especially from an experienced, extremely quick driver."
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