“So then when he goes over to the other side, without doubt he’d have been saying, ‘Valtteri, why weren’t you doing these things, Lewis does this, why are you not doing that?’
“This year it has made it even more challenging, because I’m thinking, ‘OK. How do I twist it? How do I change these small things now that they’re doing the same, without losing performance?’
“Now I’ve got to refine it and take a step up. When it’s already close to 100 per cent, taking that 1 percent, the gap closes. So bringing in a new ace is so hard to find.”
Bottas won two of the first four races of the season and he has credited Musconi with playing a part in his improvement on the track.
“It was good for me to have a change, a different way of working with engineers,” Bottas told Motorsport.