Bottas: Results not good enough

Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas has admitted his results haven't been good enough so far this season, despite sitting third in the drivers' championship.

Bottas has finished second three times this season, in Bahrain, China and Spain.

He failed to make a last-lap move on Sebastian Vettel in Bahrain before a safety car in Shanghai took a likely win away from him by allowing Red Bull to put Daniel Ricciardo on a winning strategy, while an Azerbaijan Grand Prix that fell into his hands was snatched away by a puncture.

"I think this year I've been meeting more or less my targets with the performance for the beginning of the year," Bottas said.

"I've been able to continue the good performance since the end of last year and there's been no weekends that I've been really way off the pace like there was a few last year.

"So I think I've learned from those.

"I need to continue my development. There's never things that you can't learn more. I still hope I keep improving.

"But there's been mixed races and the end results haven't been really I feel sometimes quite there that I think would have been possible with the pace we had.

"And also in Barcelona the gap to Lewis was huge but I think there's many things that affected that.

"So I'm happy and I know we can win races, I know the speed is there for that this year, it's just extremely difficult but it's possible and it will come.

"We're so early in the season. I hope I've had my bad luck for the year."