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Bottas: F1 2017 cars tougher to drive in windy conditions

Valtteri Bottas believes that Formula 1’s 2017 cars will be more difficult to drive in windy conditions, which could lead to an increase in the number of spins.

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08

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Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes AMG F1 W08
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W08

The Finn was one of many drivers to have an incident during this week’s first pre-season F1 test, suffering a high-speed spin at Turn 9 on day two after being caught out by a sudden gust of tail wind.

While there was some talk about incidents being caused by tyres letting go of their grip and causing snap oversteer, Bottas thinks that wind is actually a bigger contributing factor.

“I think in terms of tyres, from my feeling, it is not a massive difference in terms of how sudden the loss of grip is,” explained the Mercedes drivers.

“Only in the case if the tyre is not hot enough, which is easy in these kind of conditions, especially with the harder compounds, sometimes it can quite tricky to get them to work. They they are quite snappy if you have oversteer, it's very sudden.

"But with the softer compounds, once you get them to do the temperature, it felt like very much the same rate of sliding or losing the grip than last year's.

“I think, as we had on day two, very windy conditions, the cars in general felt quite snappy then.

“I think the wind does make a bigger effect now because the overall downforce, aero-wise, produced is bigger. And, if you get a gust of wind, you lose a bigger amount of downforce than you would normally. So that makes it a bit more tricky.”

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