Mercedes Formula 1 chief Toto Wolff praised Valtteri Bottas for answe♔ring his critics “in the most dominant way” by dominating the Australian Grand Prix en route to his fourth career victory. ​​​​

Bottas took a crushing victory for Mer🔯cedes in the F1 2019 season-opener🌺 on Sunday, beating teammate Lewis Hamilton by mor🥃e than 20 secondsও to record his first win since the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Questions arose about Bottas’ future with Mercedes following his winless 2018 cam෴paign, but Wolff said he was delighted to see such an emphatic response from൩ the Finn in Australia.

“[I’m] very pleased. Especially the second half of the season, he was completely written ⛎off,” Wolff told Sky Sports.

“P⛦eople didn’t think he wa𒐪s up for the job, and he bounced back in the most dominant way, completely in control of the whole weekend.

“I just remember his early years in Formula Renault and Formula 3 where he was really the bench꧙mark and he would just destroy everybody, and somehow that was lost last year.

“When he came back from the winter, he said: ‘I’m back’, and I think he rediscovered the joy of driving with his rally outing, and mental🐭ly, he’s strong.”

Mercedes managed to record its first victory in Australia since 2016 🧸with a convincing one-two finish as Ferrari – widely tipped as the favourite heading to the opening race – finished almost a minute behind.

Asked if Ferrari’s lack of pace was a surprise, Wolff said: “I 𒊎think we were surprised that we had such a good pace, and we were surprised that they didn’t have any pace at all.

“Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.”