Williams's Austin form buoys Valtteri Bottas for 2014

Williams can head into 2014 confident of a return to form after its encouraging end to the current Formula 1 season, reckons Valtteri Bottas

The radical step of ditching its Coanda-effect exhausts has helped transform the pace of the FW35, and Bottas scored his first points at Austin last weekend.

With its United States Grand Prix pace suggesting the 2013 Williams is a better car than its early-year form indicated, Bottas thinks that prospects for next year look much brighter now.

"It gives us a lot of confidence for the future, and it is very good that we understand things a lot more now that we are still in this year with this car," he said.

"So I am definitely looking forward to the future with Williams. I really think that next year can be much better, and here we showed what we can do.

"Others have developed their cars much more than ours during the whole season, but we can still get it in the points.

"It was not like we were lucky or anything, as there was no retirement in front of me."

Bottas and Williams may now be left wondering what might have been if the Coanda exhausts had been ditched earlier, but the Finn reckons that the team was justified in believing it was right to keep developing them for as long as it did.

When asked if he felt Williams should have dropped the exhausts earlier, he said: "It is always easy to say afterwards.

"We should have done it, because as we can see we gained some performance.

"But we were hoping that we could have developed the Coanda to get more out of it, as other teams do."