Analysis: Why is Bottas struggling in F1 at the moment?

Racing drivers are famous for making excuses. Not Valtteri Bottas.

His press meeting after Sunday's disappointing race in Sepang was astonishingly honest and open. He made no excuses and put himself on the rack.

The Finn is struggling for pace at the moment and described it as "the most difficult time of my career".

So what is going on?

A tale of progress then setbacks

Bottas started his Mercedes career at quite short notice after the sudden retirement of Nico Rosberg. His pre-season testing outings with the new 2017 Mercedes showed him to be some way off the pace of Lewis Hamilton, especially on the long runs in Barcelona.

He gradually whittled it down, but Bahrain was an early setback, where the Mercedes showed its characteristic of struggling with the supersoft tyres in hot conditions relative to the Ferrari.

The Silver Arrows were well beaten there and Bottas had to yield to Hamilton as he was struggling more.

There were echoes of that situation again this past Sunday, showing that while Mercedes have got on top of some set-up issues with the car, this condition remains a real problem.

Luckily for them and for Hamilton's championship challenge, Malaysia was the last such track where the combination of heat, supersoft tyres and certain corner characteristics will be present.

Russia provided a fillip; the Finn has always been quick there and he duly took his first race victory. But the came Monaco and another difficult weekend where he was well off the pace in the race, finishing fourth behind Ricciardo.

Canada and Azerbaijan steadied the ship again and then he smashed it in Austria with pole and a race win.

After the break, Belgium was another difficult race while his teammate won, and then in Singapore he qualified sixth but picked up a podium after the chaos at the start involving Verstappen and the Ferrari drivers.

Third in the championship, closer to Vettel than Vettel is to Hamilton: eight podiums, two poles and two wins - it might not sound too bad to most drivers.

But when you compare it to Ricciardo's seven podiums and one win in a clearly inferior Red Bull and to Hamilton's nine poles, seven wins and three podiums in the same car, it doesn't look so great for a proud man who wants to prove he is world class and has five more races this year and then one more season next to prove it.

The real problem is the laptimes, especially in races.

In Malaysia, he ran the new aero package all weekend, while Hamilton reverted to the old one after a poor Friday. Hamilton explained that this was their personal choice.

Bottas was 8/10ths of a second off the pace and he was clearly very down after the race: "It is difficult. Being honest, it may be the most difficult time of my career so far in terms of how it feels every time you go in the car because I just want to perform.

"I want to be in a good level and I haven't been doing that for some time for various reasons, many question marks still for me, for the team.

"So I definitely want to turn it around quickly. If I keep doing races like this for long, that is not going to be a good thing for anyone. I want to do much better than this."

The game begins to change

F1 moves on very quickly and decisions need to be made that reflect on a driver's position. In Malaysia, the Mercedes team used him as a blocker on Vettel's progress rather than as a protagonist in his own right.

This is unusual for Mercedes, as they normally prioritise the best possible double race result. But as the constructors' championship now looks secure, the drivers' title is the clear priority.

So the decision-making on Sunday as Bottas was caught by Vettel was not around what is the best stop strategy to get him out ahead of Vettel, but how long can he delay Vettel's progress and minimise the risk he posed to Hamilton.

As a top grand prix driver, you want to be performing and giving the team difficult decisions to make, as Rosberg and Hamilton did the last few years.

"The main issue was mainly struggling more with the front end, which hasn't really been the case many times this year, but now in the mid-corners it [the car] is losing a lot of front end," said Bottas.

"It is tricky to get the car turned, I'm overheating the front left tyre, also four wheels sliding in high-speed corners.

"I have been only running the new [aero] package. If I tried to go quicker I just slide more, and struggle more with the tyre temperatures.

"I tend to quite easily overheat the surface of the tyre and then, when the bulk temperature of the tyre versus the surface is not close enough, then you lose quite a lot of grip."

The boss steps in

Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff is very protective of Bottas, having mentored his early career. He gave his driver a vote of confidence after the race, but that's normal defensive leadership tactics.

More telling is what he said on Friday in the FIA press conference when I asked him about what Bottas had to do in 2018 to remain a Mercedes driver beyond that.

There is fierce competition for that seat from both Rd Bull drivers and from Esteban Ocon, Mercedes junior driver at Force India.

"It's all in his hands," said Wolff. "He just needs to drive fast and score good results. The dynamics between the drivers and the drivers and the engineering team is great so that is positive and it's about competing on track and being fast."

Bottas knows that he needs to get his mind right in order to overcome his current difficulties.

He doesn't have the skill level or toolkit that Hamilton has to drive around the quirks of this Mercedes chassis, which Hamilton admitted on Sunday night is an unpredictable beast in certain temperature/tyre/conditions.

"The car's good obviously in some places and in some others the issues that we have with the car are magnified, so we do have some big problems with it," said the championship leader. "We struggled with pace, but still, it was good enough to get second.

"There's still work to do to try and fix it but I think it's a fundamental issue with this year's car, so we've just got to try and work on improving it for next year."

Bottas concluded his thoughts to the media with these sentiments, astonishingly open for something put out there by a top F1 driver: "After such a bad run of few races, it is pure confidence in the car and trusting your own skills and being 100 percent comfortable and that makes a massive difference and definitely this weekend I haven't been 100 percent comfortable.

"It is never a good thing when you jump in the car and you don't feel 100 percent secure and if you don't know by 100 percent that you can be the quickest, it is never good.

"I just need to get that back and need to get that feeling of enjoying the driving and letting yourself a bit more loose. But it comes from all those fine details why I have been struggling sometimes."