Valtteri Bottas says he's encouraged🔜 by the improvements Mercedes has made since the F1 season-opener in Bahrain but remains wary of Red Bull de💜spite it having a troubled Friday at Imola.

Bottas domin🦂ated Friday practice for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as he topped both sessions.

In first pra🅷ctice, Sergio Perez’s running was cut short after colliding with Esteban Ocon, while in FP2, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull ground to a halt after just ten minutes.

Reflecting on Friday at Imola, Bottas said: “To be honest, starting this weekend, if I compare it with Bahrain🐻 and how the car is feeling, it’s definitely better, so that’s nice. As I said yest💎erday, it’s a different kind of track, a different type of circuit and surface and grip level, but at least the weekend started in a positive way and the car really wasn’t far off in terms of setup.

“There are still things ♍to be tunned but, overall, the balance is good. I’m. a lot happier with the ca🔯r now than three weeks ago.”

Mercedes struggled to find much time when ru🦩nning on the soft tyre during the qualifying simulations, meaning it was only a tenth clear of AlphaTauri’𒀰s Pierre Gasly in FP2.

Bottas is wary of the threat posed by the midfield and▨ he expects Red Bull tಌo still be the team to beat in qualifying.

“The whole grid looks, the midfield and the front-end, looks really close and we definitely didn't see the▨ best out of Red Bull yet𒆙 today, we're going to see that in Q3 tomorrow,” Bottas added. “But no doubt they're going to be fast and we still don't think we are the fastest car. We really need to prove that on Saturday.”

Lewis Hamilton eꦯnded both sessions justಌ behind his teammate in second place.

The seven-time world champion believes Merceꦯdes’ improvement is down to a combination of the track suiting the W12 and improvements with the car setup.

“I think a bit of both,” Hamilton said. “I think the team has definitely worked really hard to try and understand what happened in the last race where we were weak and see if we can try and tweak the car a little💯 bit better with set-up. I think the track has also come a little bit more in our direction.

“Yeah we started off 🌜with a really good set-up, small tweaks here and there but no major is🐻sues, and so far good pace for us.”