Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas says wind affects 2017 F1 cars more

The Finn was one of many drivers to have an incident during this week's first pre-season F1 test, after suffering a high-speed spin at Turn 9 on day two after being caught out by a sudden gust of tail wind.

"I think, as we had on day two, very windy conditions, the cars in general felt quite snappy then," he said.

"I think the wind does make a bigger effect now because the overall downforce, aero-wise, produced is bigger.

"And if you get a gust of wind, you lose a bigger amount of downforce than you would normally. So that makes it a bit more tricky."

In addition to Bottas's spin, Renault driver Jolyon Palmer beached his car in the gravel on an outlap on the third day of testing.

Williams rookie Lance Stroll also drew much attention for two spins and a crash over two days of running, which led Bottas's team-mate Lewis Hamilton to claim the new cars make last year's "look easy".

While there was some talk about incidents being caused by tyres letting go of their grip and causing snap oversteer, Bottas thinks that has not been a big contributing factor.

"I think in terms of tyres, from my feeling, it is not a massive difference in terms of how sudden the loss of grip is," explained the Finn.

"Only in the case if the tyre is not hot enough, which is easy in these kind of conditions, especially with the harder compounds, sometimes it can quite tricky to get them to work.

"They they are quite snappy if you have oversteer, it's very sudden.

"But with the softer compounds, once you get them to do the temperature, it felt like very much the same rate of sliding or losing the grip than last year's."