Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says he's not at all surprised by how quickly and how well Valtteri Bottas has fitted into the team.
Bottas only signed for Mercedes in January. The late notice was down to Nico Rosberg's sensational retirement from Formula 1 just five days after clinching the 2016 world championship.
Signed to a one-year contact, pundits feared that Bottas was being used as a stop-gap solution. There were suggestions he would find it almost impossible to establish himself in the team opposite Lewis Hamilton.
But halfway through the year Bottas has already claimed two pole positions, and won two Grand Prix races in Russia and Austria. He's made it onto the podium in five more races, and failed to finish only once. Overall it's hard to see what more he can to to justify a contract extension at Brackley.
"I'm not surprised," Wolff said when asked if he'd expected Bottas to adjust so well after moving from Williams.
"I've known him for a long time and I knew that his dream was to be in a car that is competitive and that lets him win races," he said.
"When the deal was done I think this was just what he wanted. He got his head down, keeps on working flat out with the engineers at the factory - and he is doing a very good job."
Wolff admitted that both he and the team have needed to make a big adjustments in the wake of Rosberg's exit and Bottas' arrival.
"Valtteri is very different [to Nico]," he told an online question-and-answer session with Mercedes fans. "He is just interested in the racing. He has a stable family life, a wonderful wife.
"[He] needs his surrounding people: he has [wife] Antti, his coach that looks after him. He has no politics, no war outside of the track."
Now Bottas is emerging as a possible contender for the world championship. He's increasingly getting in the mix with Hamilton and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. So does Wolff foresee intervening in favour of one of his drivers over the other?
"The answer is no," he said emphatically. "If both of them are in contention for the world championship we will not interfere. That is very clear.
"There could be a situation that if you come to the end of the championship and mathematically one could still win if he were to win all races and neither Sebastian nor Lewis would score any points, then obviously that doesn't count.
"But until then, and while both of them can win the championship, I'd like to see them racing. I think we owe it to them."
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