Valtteri Bottas content to wait for Williams race seat despite impressing

The Finn is scheduled to take part in 15 Friday practice sessions this season to help prepare him for F1, and so far he has shone in comparison to team-mate Pastor Maldonado.

But although his obvious speed - allied to the fact that he has now been able to deliver some sponsorship - makes him an obvious candidate to step up to a race seat as soon as possible, Bottas is happy to wait for now.

"Of course as a racer, I want to be a racing driver in this class as soon as possible but in the end, this is now how things are for me this season," Bottas told AUTOSPORT.

"For me it's the Fridays, and for me this season is really great for learning a lot about F1 and also proving myself. If I could get the race seat then I think the preparation I have got from testing on Fridays will have been really valuable."

Bottas says that he is making good progress in learning about the intricacies of F1, and feels he can develop much more over the remainder of this campaign.

"I'm learning more and more all the time," he said. "The main thing that I needed to learn was the tyres. Of course there's a lot of other stuff that you need to learn in F1, and I'm still learning more and more every Friday, especially from the tyres and how they behave, and how to squeeze time out of them.

"I think there are small bits everywhere really where I can do more. I've never done a proper long run - really long runs, like 20 laps. I still don't have a perfect idea of how the tyre really lasts from lap 15 to 25, so that's maybe something to experience at some point."