Bottas to Mercedes, Massa to Williams a "good" deal - Villeneuve

1997 Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve believes Williams would be right to let Valtteri Bottas go to Mercedes and replace him with Felipe Massa.

After Nico Rosberg's sudden retirement last year, Bottas emerged as one of the favourites to replace the German at the Silver Arrows, with the possibility of retired Massa back in the team to partner rookie Lance Stroll.

An announcement is deemed to be close, and Canadian Villeneuve thinks the deal should go ahead. 

"Definitely it would be good, Massa brought a lot to the team with his experience and his attitude and Bottas is a Toto Wolff driver anyway so that wouldn’t be too surprising,” the 1997 world champion said.

“I guess the mid-term future for the team is Lance Stroll anyway, so for a driver like Lance it is better to have an experienced driver like Felipe next to him helping him out.”

Villeneuve also thinks that Bottas has the potential to challenge three time world champion Lewis Hamilton in a championship battle, depending on if Hamilton respects him.

“Lewis is a favourite for the title definitely. He lost the championship last year and I’m sure that didn’t go down well with him so we will come very aggressive into the season,” he added.

“It depends whether is respects Bottas a lot or not. Because if he doesn’t respect Bottas then he will probably just take it easy. So it will depend a lot on that.”

Fergal Walsh