Nico Rosberg: "Bottas a great replacement"
- Published on 18 Jan 2017 11:06
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- By: Rob Veenstra
World champion Nico Rosberg says he is looking forward to seeing a "great battle" between Mercedes' new driving duo in 2017. After an eleventh hour scrabble to replace Rosberg after the German sensationally quit Mercedes and F1, the team announced this week that Lewis Hamilton's new teammate will be Williams driver Valtteri Bottas.
"I was hoping the team would quickly find a perfect successor for me," DPA news agency quotes Rosberg as saying at a sponsor event. "Valtteri is fast and reliable," he is also quoted as saying by Bild newspaper, "and now he has the best cockpit in formula one, so I hope he'll have fun. I'm glad the team has found a great replacement in such a short time," Rosberg added.
Finn Bottas, 27, said this week that he is ready to take on triple world champion Hamilton in 2017, but the Briton and Rosberg clashed at times over the past few years. "Good luck for the fight with Lewis," Rosberg smiled. "It will surely be an interesting battle. I'm curious to see what he will achieve, and how he will do with Lewis." (GMM)
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Replies (3)
Login to replyboudy
Posts: 1,168
hmmm, yet they only signed him for a year. Not a lot of convidence.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Its quite logical for them to only give him a one-year contract, they probably want to check how he performs, how he work with the team and if he can be at least neutral towards his team mate. If he checks on all those points, he could be in it for the long run. But we'll see.
dr002
Posts: 141
I agree, however if he's neutral towards his team mate, he will come second..... if Bottas wants to have a crack at the Championship he'll need to get his elbows out from the outset......
If he does want to have a crack, I reckon he needs to drop the shoulder in a couple of times and he certainly needs to be more aggressive in his defense than Rosberg was (which will likely mean a couple of clashes to let Hamilton know that he won't stand for the same shit that Rosberg did), and definitely more vocal, he needs to call Hamilton out on his wingy / whiny ways and his questionable tactics, particularly when he outright cheats like cutting the chicane in Monaco when Ricciardo was chasing him down, and cutting the first corner in Mexico to ensure he came out in front, to name but two instances......
He'll also need to find a way to keep the one-eyed commentators on the British Sky broadcast honest and fair..... The Brundle's acceptance of Charlie Whitings excuse that the reason for not penalising Hamilton for cutting the first corner in Mexico "was due to the stewards giving some leeway in the mad dash at the start of a race.... to avoid being overwhelmed with potential inquiries", was pathetic. As was his reason that it was also because Hamilton had backed off to allow the rest of the field to catch up to him and had therefore not gained a lasting advantage. My god,cheating to end up in front,no matter by how much, results in a lasting advantage!..... .Just saying that I think its much easier for Hamilton to stretch the rules when he knows in advance that he will get favorable coverage throughout the telecast and the post race analysis of the broadcast.