Bottas must keep winning to avoid number two status - Massa

Massa believes that Sebastian Vettel is the clear main title contender at Ferrari, and that Mercedes may be forced to put its resources behind Hamilton – unless Bottas, who took his maiden win last time out in Russia, can keep himself in the game.

The Brazilian was himself called upon to help Kimi Raikkonen’s campaign at Ferrari back in 2007.

“For sure I was happy that he won the race, and I came to say congratulations to him,” he said of Bottas in Spain.

“To be honest, he did a very good race. Everybody knows he has a very good competition from his teammate, and his teammate is top level as well. I don’t see that it’s impossible for Valtteri to fight with him – I think it’s possible. We know it’s not easy.

“To be able to fight with Lewis, now is the right time. If he’s after the championship, now he improves… If you see Kimi, he will work for Sebastian for the whole championship, it’s clear.

"If you have another team that is fighting for the championship and you have a driver that is more than 20 points behind, he will need to do the same. So now is the time.

“If he wants to fight with Lewis he needs to win another race here, he needs to score more points than Lewis now – then the team cannot do anything.”

Bottas: Mercedes can't rely on qualifying pace

Meanwhile, Bottas himself has stressed that Mercedes cannot hope to beat Ferrari through qualifying prowess alone, urging improvement in race performance.

The Mercedes has generally been quicker than Ferrari over one lap this year, but the Maranello car has proved more flexible in different conditions on race day, while the Silver Arrows have sometimes struggled with their tyres.

“I think here qualifying is definitely very important, but we can’t rely on qualifying only,” Bottas said in Barcelona, where he has finished 0.029s behind pace-setting teammate Hamilton in FP1.

“It’s a long race, and if we’re lacking pace, then Ferrari will have opportunities to get us with the strategy. If they have more pace, one way or another at some races they will get ahead. That’s how it goes, even though it’s difficult to overtake.

“So we are definitely focussing on getting the car well set up with all of the compounds, because we think there’s a big area we can improve on.

"We’re still mindful [that] we don’t want to take off much of the qualifying pace, which, on average, has been a little bit of an advantage this year. It’s a fine line where to focus and how much, but we’re doing our best.”

Bottas, who stormed to his maiden victory in Russia as Hamilton struggled, says he understands why he outperformed his teammate at the Sochi Autodrom.

“For sure I’ve always felt comfortable in Sochi, but it’s not down just to that. I felt Russia was my best weekend so far this year in terms of my own performance, no matter about the track.

“I’ve looked into every single thing from Russia - what I can do better and what I did good and so on, and I do understand all of the points why there was a difference and so on, and I’ll try to keep good momentum out of that.”