Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas has been highlighting the differences between the Ferrari engines he has been using this year, to the Mercedes power units he became accustomed to in the five years previous.
The Finn raced with Renault power in his debut season in Formula 1 with Williams, who switched over to the Brixworth-made power units at the turn of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014.
Bottas would join Mercedes alongside Sir Lewis Hamilton in 2017, and his 10 wins helped the German side to the Constructors’ Championship in all of those five years.
The 33-year-old departed last year having only ever been given one-year contracts by team principal, Toto Wolff, and he joined Frederic Vasseur’s Alfa Romeo outfit.
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Bottas has been in the points seven times this season, all of which arrived in the opening nine rounds of the year, but the development of the Hinwil-built car has slowed since the Canadian Grand Prix.
Their only point in the last seven races has come through Zhou Guanyu’s P10 in Monza, but this has still been a solid year for the Switzerland-based crew.
Bottas and Zhou have guided them to sixth in the Constructors’ Standings heading into the final six rounds of the year, and they are on course for their best championship finish in 10 years.
The 10-time race winner retired from four races last year, but none of those retirements were down to reliability failures.
Nonetheless, Bottas went through eight Mercedes engines, and he is on his sixth power unit so far in 2022, having retired from four races due to mechanical issues.
While Mercedes’ reliability is slightly better than that of Ferrari, Bottas pinpoints one key area where the Scuderia’s powertrain has an edge.
“If I would compare the power to last year’s engine, it feels very similar in terms of the level of power,” he said, per RaceFans.net.
READ: Valtteri Bottas reveals Mercedes defied Lewis Hamilton
“Last year, there was issues with reliability, I think I had eight engines last year. Now I’m up to six this year, so it could be close!
“The driveability with Ferrari is really smooth. I think that was the biggest difference, the driveability I felt was improved with Ferrari.”
Bottas and Zhou are now both contracted to Alfa Romeo until the end of next year following Tuesday’s news that the Chinese rookie will be staying on for another season.