Bottas wants early 2021 F1 contract talks

Valtteri Bottas wants to start negotiations over a new F1 contract with Mercedes as early as possible in 2020. The Finn is out of contract with Mercedes at the end of the year. Bottas admitted he found his drawn-out contract talks of previous years to be “a distraction” that hindered his performance. “It’s no secret that my contract ends [at the] end of this season,” Bottas said. “So naturally you want to start talking quite a bit early on but at the same time, at this time of the year there’s no point as it’s too early and we are pretty busy focusing on performance. “But we have a good relationship with Toto [Wolff] and everyone in the team, so when it’s time, we will talk about things openly. For sure I learned things and the team also said they learned about how we handled things [the 2019 talks] last year and how we communicated it. “I’m sure it can be done a bit smoother and with less things happening around [it] - less headlines. But like I said it’s early days.” Source: Crash

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