Bottas aims to make Mercedes renewal a "no-brainer"

The 30-year-old Finn replaced retiring Nico Rosberg at F1's benchmark team back in 2017, and has been getting by on one-year deals since, helping Mercedes to three successive constructors' championships despite struggling to mount a sustained drivers' title challenge of his own.

Most recently, he was preferred to Mercedes protege Esteban Ocon for the 2020 seat alongside Hamilton, with Ocon subsequently signing a two-year deal with Renault.

However, with all the leading F1 drivers bar Charles Leclerc out of contract at the end of the coming season, Bottas is likely to have another fight on his hands to remain part of the Silver Arrows F1 set-up.

"That's my aim, for sure," Bottas said of keeping his Mercedes drive. "Because I do enjoy working with this team. So I try to do that for sure.

"But I think it still could be interesting, even from my side, I'm also running out of contract next year. I'll be keen to see if there's any other opportunities and whatever. We'll see next year and you never know what's going to happen in six months time. Lots of things can happen, but it will be interesting.

"Obviously my aim is to make it a no-brainer decision for the team and hopefully more than one year on paper."

Bottas said last year that the lack of job security that would be provided by a multi-year contract was becoming "a pain in the ass", while Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff accepted his outfit should do a "better" job regarding the Finn's future contracts.

"You do want to be in a good position as you can," Bottas continued. "Now it's time to perform well until, you know, all the talks start.

"It's always part of F1 and normal in this sport, but I just need to keep doing what I'm doing now and keep enjoying it and getting those results."