Wolff: Sponsor enabled Bottas switch

May 25 - One sponsor could have made the difference when it came to Valtteri Bottas securing the Mercedes seat for 2017.

Team boss Toto Wolff admitted that Bottas' major sponsor at Williams, Antti Aarnio-Wihuri, made the crucial decision to switch his allegiance to Mercedes this year.

"Yes, without it we would have put Pascal Wehrlein with Lewis Hamilton," Wolff is quoted by the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat.

"Antti made is possible for us to move Valtteri to us," he added.

"Valtteri certainly has other very important partners, such as Kemppi, but Antti enabled this agreement with Mercedes," Wolff revealed.

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Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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