Valtteri Bottas believes Mercedes head into the 2019 Formula 1 season as underdogs for the first time in several years, with Ferrari holding the title of favourites following a strong pre-season testing performance.
Mercedes have secured five consecutive Constructors' Championships and are considered the dominantn force in the sport at present. However new rules have helped to shuffle the order and going by testing alone, many within the paddock have Ferrari down as the quickest team, with Lewis Hamilton even suggesting they hold as much as a half second gap.
Speaking to select media including Motorsport Week on Wednesday, Bottas backed the claim that Mercedes are underdogs.
"What we see from testing, we think so," he said. "We’re going to be kind of chasing.
"In testing it seems like they [Ferrari] had a good few tenths, definitely, but here [Melbourne] is such a different track. And we don’t know how much they’ve improved. I’m sure with analysing everything and making some improvements we’ve been able to recover some of that, but how much is only guessing."
There's also some question marks over Red Bull's performance: "We’re still quite unsure about how Red Bull will be. We think they’re going to be strong because Honda looks strong now as well and they’ve always had a good car."
Bottas however remains confident in Mercedes' ability to outdevelop its rivals during the course of the season.
"Over the past two years, the way they’ve been able to improve the car during the year has been pretty rapid, so for sure they’re going to be a threat as well.
"We are definitely in the fight and we know we have a strong team. It’s a massively long season, and always with some regulation changes like this year is going to be a lot about how much you can improve the car, because the cars in Abu Dhabi are going to be so much quicker than this weekend. So whoever is quickest this weekend, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s close. It matters who improves the most."
