The New 'Fin' at Mercedes

The shock wave of Nico Rosberg's sudden retirement from Formula 1 left the community in tense suspicion for some time. There have been reports that nearly 80% of the F1 grid were in contact with Mercedes Team Manager Toto Wolff to hopefully capture the most in demand seat in Motorsport for the coming season. After several months of leaving fans in the dark about who the new face for the Silver Arrows team would be, it was finally revealed in mid January that it would be the Finnish native Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas has seemed to be a driver very much swept under the rug. Upon his recruitment, Sir Frank Williams recognized the talent the Fin possessed saying that Bottas was "quite simply one of the most talented young racing drivers I have come across and we expect great things from him."

Having been with Williams since the 2013 season, Bottas has had a very solid start to his career scoring 411 points in his 78 Grand Prix entered. The resume also includes starts from the front row of the grid, 9 podiums, and a career best finish of 2nd in a car that has been competitive but no better than third in the constructor championship. He has also eclipsed his experienced teammate Felipe Massa in the 3 seasons spent with the Brazilian. So how will the Fin's performance compare with new teammate Lewis Hamilton?

Bottas already has a history of high level of competition as previously stated, outperforming his teammates through his entire F1 career. The task will be even larger as he faces the 3 time world champion who is still very much in the prime of his career and has also scored the highest among his teammates many times and also lost the World Championship as a rookie with McLaren by one point in the 2007 season to Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen. Hamilton himself is also known for being a very skilled and brave overtaker through his career, making both of these drivers quite similar in style and speed. This could set up a very interesting inter-team battle as has already been seen in recent years at Mercedes between Rosberg and Hamilton.

The skill Bottas will be bringing to Mercedes makes them an even larger threat than maybe some people thought as he is a relatively quiet driver, comparable to fellow countryman Kimi Raikkonen in that regard. Just don't let this fool you about his abilities as it is a strong argument that Mercedes has the best driver line up for the 2017 campaign.

We could be poised to see a battle for the ages for the World Championship between the Mercedes drivers and the also aggressive Red Bull drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.