Valtteri Bottas doubts George Russell can beat Lewis Hamilton due to the consistency of the seven-time world champion.

A former Silver Arrows teammate to Hamilton, Bottas maintains Russell does have the speed, but will ultimately come unstuck with

“I don’t see anyone else beating Lewis in the near future in the same machinery,” the Finn told The Sun. “George will adjust well because he has been with Mercedes for some years. But beating Lewis is not easy. I have experienced that.”

“Every driver has form that is a little bit up and down, but his baseline for performance is just so high. Even when he has a bad day it is not too bad. It is his consistency over the season.”

Hamilton kept tight-lipped over the saga and initially refused to confirm he would return for the 2022 season, but the seven-time world champion cleared the air at Mercedes’ car reveal last week and insisted he does not blame Verstappen for what happened.

“This has nothing to do with Max,” Hamilton said. “Max did everything a driver would do given the opportunity he was given.

Valtteri Bottas is “excited” for his next challenge with Alfa Romeo after five years with Mercedes.

“When I joined Mercedes. It was difficult for me to take the lead because of Lewis being there,” Bottas said.

“With him being in the team, it was always difficult for me to take that lead role. So now it is different and a fresh start for me — and having that lead role is a good feeling. A part of me is always going to miss working at Mercedes. Now I have started looking back at my time there, I have tried to take all the positive moments we had.

“There were great moments and I enjoyed working with Lewis and Toto, but I am also really excited for my new chapter. I’m sure with the experience I have with Williams and after five years at Mercedes, I will be able to help the team move forward.

“I feel really comfortable with my role. Yes, there is a responsibility and I have commitments to the team, but it is exciting.”

Haas have become the latest F1 team to debut its 2022 car on track.

Their VF22 car has been seen leaving the garage at Barcelona.

Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher will hope to improve on last season’s struggles with focus switching early to 2022 ahead of the new era under new regulations.

Toto Wolff has revealed the full extent of F1’s budget cap as Mercedes face their toughest challenge yet.

“It’s one side whether you can really change concepts technically. Sometimes when you embark on a direction, that’s it,” Wolff said.

“And then the added pressure of the cost cap makes it very difficult to then change the car fundamentally because everything is planned, every upgrade and their related costs are planned.

“Therefore, we are much more restricted with the budget cap in our ability to implement creative processes onto the car.”

Toto Wolff has bemoaned the “extremely painful” challenge facing Mercedes F1 in 2022.

The budget cap restrictions could present issues next season as the Silver Arrows attempt to extend their dominance in the constructors’ championship after landing an eighth successive crown in 2021.

F1’s cost cap has been reduced by $5m after initially coming in at $145 million last year, with the goal of evening out the grid and providing more competition.

“It has been very, very difficult to structure the company and the organisation in the right way to meet the cost cap at $140m,” Wolff said.

“Also in a high-inflation environment, and we are reducing by five million, we have a situation where you are not able to increase the costs and the payroll. That is extremely painful.

“On the other side, you have to decide very carefully where you invest your dollars in R&D.

“In the past, it was a little bit easier because you could follow various avenues chasing performance.

“Today you have to decide which one has the highest potential and then embark on it so it’s a totally different way of operating for the big teams.”

Valtteri Bottas insists George Russell’s biggest challenge will be to replicate Lewis Hamilton’s ability to adapt to any conditions and deliver.

“Another of his key strengths is his ability to adapt to different conditions, the skill to react to changes, be it set-up or whatever,” Bottas told the Sun.

“This and his race-craft. His tyre management is a special skill and all these things are combined with talent.

“And he puts in the work, which not many people see, so he is hard to beat. I can be proud that on my day, I’ve been able to beat him. But not consistently enough to beat him over a season.”

George Russell maintains he is eager to avoid getting into ‘naive’ in-house fighting with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes and prefers to focus on “working together”.

“It’s something I’ve not even thought about, to be honest, because my main goal is to make sure I have the teams and the car around me for developing the car in a quick direction to give us the best opportunity over the course of the next two, three, four years,” Russell said.

“We’ve seen the development rate, we hear rumours from all the other teams of how much they’re developing.

“You’ve got to remember Formula 1 developed this ruleset with the idea they [the cars] were going to be around four seconds slower, and we’re already hearing from every single team that they’re going to be far, far faster than that.

“Lewis and I need to work together, we can’t focus too much on each other because things are constantly changing and that’s why we need to take a step back.

“We hope Mercedes will still be the fastest team, the fastest car on the grid but there are no guarantees and we need to not be naive to that and to work together to ensure we are.”