Valtteri Bottas: Hamilton engineer swap was “a great opportunity”

Bottas was without a race engineer for the beginning of 2019 after Tony Ross switched to Mercedes’ Formula E team, leading to the decision for Hamilton’s performance engineer Riccardo Musconi to take his position.
 
A move that made a difference from the start as the Finn stormed to pole position in Melbourne, going on to win, followed by consecutive P2 finishes and another win in Azerbaijan.
 
"It was good for me to have a change, a different way of working with engineers," Bottas told Motorsport.com.
 
"And also getting Ricci from Lewis's side, he's been working with him, so he knows very much in detail about his driving techniques and ways of setting up the car.

"For sure, it was always going to be a great opportunity for me to get maybe something even more than what I normally get in the meetings and what I see from the data.

"It was nice to have that kind of approach on the engineering side."

The move didn’t come with any issues from either party, unlike when Mercedes swapped Hamilton’s number one mechanics with Nico Rosberg, with Bottas stating it shows the positive relationship between the two drivers.

"There's never been a problem about that," said Bottas. "It definitely shows that we deal with things as they come in.

"He [Hamilton] is still hungry to be even better than what he is now. For him also, with different people, it's always an opportunity as well."