Valtteri Bottas feels the 2022 cars are currently lacking a little bit of downforce, but he does not believe they will be significantly different to drive than the 2021 machines.
The Finn, who will race for Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN next year after five seasons with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, has experienced the simulators for both teams across this year, running the 2022 car for Mercedes earlier this year and the one from Alfa Romeo after the conclusion to 2021 campaign.
However, he does not see a major shift in driveability, and he expects the downforce levels to be recovered sooner rather than later.
“At least at that point, it felt like the cars are a bit off in terms of downforce,” Bottas is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “But the overall feeling, at least in the sim, wasn’t that dissimilar in either of the simulators.
“We can’t simulate following other cars and stuff like that, but it’s not crazy different. Maybe still a bit less downforce but, like I said, that will change.”
Bottas says he will miss the high downforce cars, particularly from 2020 where the speed was phenomenal, but he will be happy to race the new era of machines if it means better and closer racing.
“It’s been fun, especially last year [2020] – the cars were even faster than this year, with more downforce,” added Bottas. “They’ve been nice but I’ll let you know next year how the new ones [are].
“If the racing is better and we can follow more closer, then it should be even more fun, and I think the cars in the future will be as quick as now pretty quickly. Hopefully that’s going to be the case.”