What Bottas is lacking compared to Hamilton

Elite sport is defined by small details. Top-tier athletes are therefore extremely self-critical, which is probably the reason Valtteri Bottas describes his first 11 races with Mercedes, which have exceeded most expectations, as "not a very good season so far - it's been OK".

Bottas says his 2017 has been a mix of "good moments, but also difficult races". He made this observation before the Hungarian Grand Prix, in which he beat team-mate Lewis Hamilton and extended his podium streak to five races. It took his seasonal tally to eight podiums from 11 races: two more than Hamilton, and the same as championship leader Sebastian Vettel. It meant he went into the summer break third in the standings, 33 points from the summit.

Replacing the world champion at the all-conquering team of the moment must have been a daunting prospect for a driver who had yet to have the chance to win a grand prix, so Bottas and Mercedes would surely have taken the offer of two victories and a glut of podiums in fewer than a dozen races as Nico Rosberg's successor.

But Bottas's rapid assimilation at Mercedes, combined with some obvious missed opportunities and an insatiable desire to improve, explains why he looks back at the first half of the season with some regret.

He wants more. A "stupid" spin under the safety car in China and an engine failure in Spain left him 41 points behind championship leader Vettel after five races. At the summer break, six races later, the gap is 33 points.

That's a solid bit of chipping away rather than a stunning hack into Vettel's lead, although more encouragingly in the same time Bottas has reduced his deficit to team-mate Hamilton from 35 points to 19. And, given that Bottas's podium run includes victory in the Austrian GP, his second win of the season, it's small wonder he is "very much looking forward to the second half of the season".

What will be key to meeting his own high expectations will be to address the one area in which he seems to be struggling compared with Hamilton. Bottas has ticked off a couple of important points on his to-do list - the first pole and the first win - and he's repeated both feats. This is strong, but he's losing 6-2 to Hamilton on the pole count and 4-2 on race wins.

Bottas's consistency, and his ability to make the most out of Mercedes' "diva" of a 2017 car on its troubled days, are what have brought him so close to Hamilton in the points. In pure, raw performance, Hamilton has had an undeniable edge when it's mattered. His peaks are higher: witness the flawless Chinese Grand Prix weekend, his defeat of Vettel in wheel-to-wheel combat in Spain, and his Silverstone qualifying lap and serene race performance.

Bottas has had his own highs: beating the faster Ferraris in Russia as Hamilton toiled, pumping in an astonishing lap to qualify third in Monaco, and winning from pole in Austria. But he's also faded horribly from pole in Bahrain and was outgunned by Hamilton in Canada and Britain.

"The more time you spend with the car and driving it, you get more at one with the car" Valtteri Bottas

Bottas had to adjust to life at Mercedes - he didn't bring his engineering team from Williams, opting instead to stick with the personnel who helped Rosberg defeat Hamilton to the 2016 title.

He recognised that he would be able to adapt more quickly to the whole Mercedes environment if he worked with Rosberg's established crew of race engineer Tony Ross and performance engineer Marcus Dudley. Rather than try to mould the team to his requirements, Bottas knew that the bigger gains in his first season would come through getting the most from the team as it was.

This has undoubtedly played a key part in Bottas's rapid settling-in process at Mercedes, and gives him a good platform from which to push on in the second half of 2017 - when delivering bigger performances will be crucial if he is to take the fight to Vettel and Hamilton.

What will probably encourage Bottas most is that his out-and-out pace this year has been excellent. Comparing the seasonal supertimes - taking the fastest lap of any given grand prix weekend and expressing it as a percentage - Bottas stands second at 100.331%, trailing Hamilton by just 0.067%. So one-lap speed is clearly not Bottas's issue, but producing it at the right time, and in explosive fashion, is where Hamilton remains ahead.

That's why the difference percentage-wise balloons to 0.48% when you compare the Mercedes duo's qualifying efforts. Bottas was a good chunk quicker than Hamilton in the places Mercedes struggled most - Russia (0.513%), Monaco (1.66%) and Hungary (0.232%) being the most obvious examples. But at the venues where Mercedes had the edge, Hamilton put his team-mate firmly in the shade - notably in Canada (1%), Azerbaijan (0.431%) and Britain (0.896%).

This suggests Bottas isn't quite stringing it together exactly when he needs to. He was well beaten in Montreal, despite being close in the first two stages of qualifying, and Mercedes chief Toto Wolff described the gap as "unknown territory". Then in Baku, Bottas was ahead after the first runs but then Hamilton pulled a stunning lap out of the bag when it counted.

A lock-up hurt Bottas at Silverstone, although he also suffered there thanks to the loss of a super-soft tyre run in Q2, when he ran on the soft tyre for strategic reasons ahead of a grid penalty for a gearbox change. But even if we discount Silverstone (and arguably we shouldn't, given that Hamilton's deficit to Bottas in qualifying in Austria has the same explanation), Bottas has time to find in qualifying. It doesn't take a genius to make the connection between Hamilton's superior pole tally and his higher number of 2017 wins.

"I would have said that's a pretty strong record against the fastest man on the grid," argues Wolff when asked about Bottas's 6-5 qualifying deficit against Hamilton.

"Valtteri for me performs up to our expectations. When we decided to take him we knew about his qualities. On-track he's met our expectations, and it's getting better every race and he progresses every race, which is very nice to see."

Mercedes' engineering strength, Rosberg's steady improvement against Hamilton and Bottas's ability and desire to develop mean there is reason to expect the progression Wolff talks of.

In his first season in F1 he had the measure of Pastor Maldonado in qualifying, and he obliterated Felipe Massa during their time as team-mates at Williams. Those four seasons included some mesmerising qualifying efforts - such as third in Canada as a rookie, driving a poor car - but Bottas doesn't need to go back to previous seasons to find proof of his potentially prodigious pace in qualifying.

In the Monaco example mentioned earlier, Bottas qualified 0.045s from pole; Hamilton slumped to 13th on the grid in the same car and was never close to being at the races.

So Bottas can do it - has done it - at Mercedes. Now he needs to do it when the car's on-song, so he can go toe-to-toe with Hamilton at his best, not just do more than him on the team's bad days.

Everything else Bottas needs is in his armoury. His race pace has compared very favourably with Hamilton's. There's also his undeniable mental strength: witness bouncing back from spinning in China to land a maiden pole one week later in Bahrain, or recovering from the disappointing race in Bahrain to claim his first win in Russia. And the manner of both his Russian success and win number two in Austria was enormously impressive, soaking up intense pressure from Vettel.

In Hungary, very little attention was given to whether the three points Hamilton forfeited by ceding third place could win Bottas the title

Rectify the deficit in qualifying and Bottas could be a more formidable force for Mercedes than Hamilton, because of his consistency in race trim. Hamilton was well below par in Russia and Monaco, where Mercedes was weakest.

In Hungary, his poor qualifying performance ultimately led to him having to cede third position to Bottas - who had only dropped behind Hamilton because of a team instruction. Had Hamilton qualified ahead and stayed there in the early stages of the grand prix, this scenario would not have come about. Bottas earned that third place, albeit in a slightly weird fashion.

The class Hamilton showed in honouring the agreement to return the position after he failed to mount an effective attack on the Ferraris was one of the main reactions to the Hungarian GP position-swap. The other was of how Hamilton and Mercedes could regret the decision if Hamilton goes on to lose the 2017 title to Vettel by three points or fewer. Very little attention was given to the alternative. What if the extra three points win Bottas the title?

Bottas's credentials as a championship challenger have been strengthened as 2017 has worn on, but most people probably still expect him to fade into a number two role behind Hamilton eventually. The reality seems to be heading in quite a different direction, though. If Bottas can maintain his present trajectory, Hamilton will need to worry about his team-mate as much as he does the Ferrari in front.

Bottas said in Hungary "I know my performance should only get better from here". If his improvement comes in the right areas, if he can find what he needs to match Hamilton's peaks, he can go the distance in the title fight. Everything else is in place to make that happen.