Valtteri Bottas is hopeful his ꦗupgraded Mercꦜedes Formula 1 engine has not suffered any damage following a water leak during second practice for the French Grand Prix. 

Bottas finished behind teammate and Friday pacesetter Lewis Hamilton as Mercedes made a strong start to the first F1 grand prix wee✤kend in France for 10 years, before the Finn encountered an issue 🔥on his W09 in FP2. 

Hamilton went on to top the second session with Bottasꦕ down in seventh after Mercedes discovered a water leak that kept Bottas in the garage for much of the final 30 minutes, meaning he failed to complete representative qualifying and race simulations.&n⛄bsp;

He said Mercedes were still inves🌟tigating the problem following the conclusion of the session but remains confident his power unit will be usable for the rest of the weekend. 

“Practice two was problematic as I only got a few laps in the beginning then we had a water leak with the engine which we are still inv🍸estigating,” Botta✨s explained. 

“It is the new spec and it definitely felt fresh but we now need to find out the cause of the water leak but I think we are still confident we can run it for the rest of t☂he weekend which is good.”

Mercedes finally introduced its anticipated engine update on Friday in France, revealing it is a better specification than the one it originall🀅y planned to run at the Canadian Grand Prix before it was delayed due to reliability concerns. 

Bottas believes Mercedes’ new ‘phase 2.1’ engine felt “♑a bit better” compared to the old power unit the team ran in Canada but expects Ferrari to find more pace ahead of qualifying. 

“It felt good. We are not runni♕ng it yet in full power so there is more to discover tomorrow but in normal running it felt fresh and nice and a bit better than the old one.

“W🅠e definitely looked competitive today in both sessions and Lewis got a really good lap in FP2 so I th💜ink we are going to be competitive but we’ve seen on Fridays Ferrari have been sandbagging so I think they are doing it again but let’s see for tomorrow and Sunday.”