17/01/2017
NEWS STORY
Finally confirmed at Mercedes, Valtteri Bottas is in no doubt about his target at Mercedes... the title.
Never mind Blue Monday, yesterday was Silver Monday, Sauber Monday or Martini Williams Monday as three teams finally finalised their driver line-ups.
As one would expect, all of it hinged on Mercedes and as Toto Wolf and Valtteri Bottas crossed the final Ts and dotted the final Is in the Finn's contract, so began the final phase of F1 musical chairs we've been waiting for as Pascal Wehrlein headed to Sauber and Felipe Massa hung up his slippers and headed back to Grove to fill the seat vacated by his former teammate.
When Claire Williams said on Sunday that the deal was nearly done, after all the weeks of speculation nobody quite expected it to be announced within twenty-four hours, but that's F1 for you.
Now officially part of the Mercedes family, Bottas has set out his stall, and having clearly learned from Nico Rosberg's experience says that while wanting to work with Lewis Hamilton to help Mercedes to further title glory, he is not going to be a pushover and is targeting his own championship success.
"Lewis is going to be a great reference," he told Sky Sports, "everyone knows exactly how good he is, he's a great driver and I am sure as a pair we can work well, I'm sure we can be good team players together.
"I don't know him that well yet," he continued, "but I'm looking forward to getting to know him better. I see no issues at all between us. I am sure we can work well together, push each other on the track hard, race fair but really hard and at the same time push the team together.
"My target is to perform from the very first race as well as the car can, to get everything out of the car," he added. "I know I am capable of that. I know we will be very close with Lewis.
"Being able to be in such a great team with such a great history, is now potentially a chance to fight for the championship and for me the drivers' championship is the only goal in my life at the moment.
"The team has won many titles, I haven't won any and I'm sure we share the same target. We want to win so we will go flat out," concluded the Finn. "It's time to turn a new page and go chasing for the win and then much, much more after that."
Brave words, but one cannot help but feel the Finn's steely resolve is going to be tested to the absolute limit in the months ahead.