Can Bottas convince Mercedes to keep him?

A mistake amid a run of glowing results can bring a career to its knees. A moment of brilliance amid a dire succession of failures can offer a lifeline. Small details can define sporting careers. That is why elite athletes are constantly striving for perfection. And it is why Valtteri Bottas was disappointed with his maiden season with Mercedes.

His first half was nothing to be ashamed of. Having been parachuted into the reigning world champion team at short notice, following Nico Rosberg's shock retirement, Bottas acquitted himself remarkably well. He ticked off his first Formula 1 pole position in round three in Bahrain and followed that up with his first victory in Russia a race later, comprehensively beating his three-time world champion team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

He subsequently repeated both feats in Austria and entered the summer break just 19 points adrift of Hamilton and 33 off the top spot occupied by Sebastian Vettel. Had Bottas and Mercedes been offered that situation before the season, they would almost certainly have taken it.

But after the summer interregnum, Hamilton upped his game and Bottas couldn't go with him. In the seven races that followed, which culminated in Hamilton winning the championship, Bottas scored 93 points to Hamilton's 145. In that period Hamilton won five races and finished second once. In contrast, Bottas managed three podiums and only once finished in front of his team-mate - at the last of that run in Mexico, when Hamilton was involved in a collision with Vettel at the start.

Bottas recovered in the final two races, taking pole in both and winning the finale in Abu Dhabi to secure his third victory of the season, but that improvement has to be weighed against the fact that the championship had been decided by that point, bringing with it changed priorities for some of the protagonists.

Nonetheless, Bottas has been given another year in which to prove that he has what it takes to keep his seat at Mercedes for 2019 and beyond. The champion team has a plethora of options. Its junior Esteban Ocon and Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo are top of the list. But Bottas has the skillset to prove he deserves to stay.

"To say Valtteri's had a slump is a bit cheap and not right" James Allison

Comparing the 'supertimes' - taking the fastest lap of any given grand prix weekend and expressing it as a percentage - Bottas ended 2017 third at 100.387%. He trailed Hamilton by 0.104%. Only Sauber duo Pascal Wehrlein and Marcus Ericsson were more evenly matched. Bottas was also just 0.038% behind Vettel in second. And 0.238% ahead of Kimi Raikkonen who was next best. So one-lap speed is clearly not Bottas's problem.

But producing it at the right time is. Hamilton led the qualifying head-to-head 13-7 and took 11 pole positions to Bottas's four over the course of the season. When it mattered in Q3, Hamilton was able to deliver. The average qualifying gap in Q3 between Hamilton and Bottas was 0.401s. Bottas needs to harness his speed more consistently.

In race trim, Bottas is much stronger; last season he trailed 11-8 when both cars finished the race. When Mercedes' 'diva' acted up, Hamilton struggled while Bottas excelled. But when the car was on song, Hamilton was comfortably ahead.

Mercedes technical director James Allison doesn't feel it's fair to say Bottas had a slump in the middle of the season, but instead feels it was more a case of Hamilton stepping up his game and Bottas struggling to react and stay with him.

"It's very easy to just look at the calendar and say 'from this point onwards it wasn't so good, Lewis has stepped up a gear or Valtteri's had a slump'," says Allison.

"That's a bit cheap and not right because the popular feeling is that Valtteri had a hard time since the summer break. It's much more realistic to say Lewis has been performing really well all year and has had an extremely good run since the summer break.

"If you look at the detail in amongst that, Valtteri was a very strong second to Lewis [in qualifying] at Suzuka - the middle of this so-called slump. He would've been P2 on the grid but suffered a gearbox penalty, and finished only 10s behind Lewis in a race Lewis was pushing."

Consistency across a range of different tracks is where Bottas perhaps struggles. Allison says on tracks with smooth asphalt, such as Baku and the Red Bull Ring, Bottas is "really very strong" but he "has a harder time" when the asphalt is very open and rough. "But I think that's more just a question of learning how to manage the car in that situation and Lewis has had a few more years to manage that," he adds.

Hamilton had four seasons with Mercedes under his belt before 2017, whereas Bottas was coming in late, with little preparation time and no Mercedes-specific background data.

"What he's been doing better than me, I think it comes mainly from experience," admits Bottas. "I think ultimately mechanically the car hasn't really changed much from the past few years, in terms of how it behaves, and it was very different from how the Williams car behaved. So there's been many things for me to learn, and I've been kind of catching up on things all the time."

He believes he will be "a much more complete, much quicker driver on average" in 2018 than in '17 now he is familiar with Mercedes. But he needs to be, for he has nowhere to hide and must deliver.

Bottas may have been disappointed with his season in 2017, but Mercedes will have been very happy. On one side of the garage it had a driver competing at arguably his highest ever level and going on to win the championship. On the other, it had a driver who adapted quickly to his new surroundings, won races and took points off its chief competitor, Ferrari, to secure the constructors' championship win. That would be a dream team for most.

"I always believed that a very fierce rivalry between team-mates would be good for the team. I learned is that is probably not true" Toto Wolff

In the 17 races Bottas and Vettel finished, Bottas was ahead eight times. Had Bottas's result been expunged from the final classification, Vettel would have scored an additional 34 points. That wouldn't have been enough to overhaul Hamilton, but reducing the deficit to 12 would have certainly given him a greater shot at the time.

Compared with the other Ferrari of Raikkonen, Bottas's results were even more favourable. In the 17 races they both finished, Bottas was ahead 12 times to five. Had everyone else's results been taken away, Bottas would have scored 99 more points than Raikkonen. Mercedes could not have asked for much more.

Mercedes had a difficult time managing the dynamic between Hamilton and Rosberg as their battles for the championship became increasingly bitter. But despite several controversies between the duo, including the use of engine modes, pit strategy, on-track collisions, personnel swaps between the garages and the way the team managed the rivalry, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff still felt Hamilton and Rosberg pushing each other hard had a positive benefit. Until, that is, they paired Bottas and Hamilton together.

Hamilton has credited improved harmony within the team as a key part of his and Mercedes' 2017 championship success. And Wolff has admitted that the way Hamilton and Bottas interact has changed the way the team thinks about internal rivalries between its drivers. In a championship battle as tight as 2017's was, Wolff believes that healthier relationship was very important.

"In the past I always believed that a very fierce rivalry between team-mates would be good for the team because they would be pushing each other. The lesson I learned is that is probably not true - you need two team-mates that perform at a high level and keep pushing each other in the car, but the rivalry shouldn't spill over into controversy outside the car.

"The mindset and the relationship between the two made us stronger, gave an open and honest environment, and fundamentally our very fast, difficult car got into a good place also because the two worked so well together. The dynamic between Valtteri and Lewis made us develop the car in a very efficient way and made us win the two championships, so not for one second do I regret where we are today."

With Ricciardo and Ocon representing a significant threat to his future at Mercedes, Bottas must harness that raw one-lap speed and deliver it consistently when it matters, build on his experience from last year to enable him to compete against Hamilton more regularly, and maintain a harmonious atmosphere within the team.

If he can do that - and as a result play a key role in Mercedes winning a fifth double world championship - he will make Mercedes think much harder about the wisdom of showing him the door.