“We quite often struggled in hot conditions”- Mercedes developments are bane for tyres

 “We quite often struggled in hot conditions”– Valtteri Bottas reveals that his team’s developments are harmful to the tyres.

Valtteri Bottas is not having a good year with Mercedes and is struggling below in the table, as his performance in Imola was a disaster and eventually turned into a DNF after a crash with George Russell.

Though Bottas is not delighted with the developments made by Mercedes, as it is harming tyre management and is a lethal disadvantage in hot conditions.

“I think it is a bit overall a thing with our car,” said Bottas, according to the GPFans. “Over the years we quite often struggled in hot conditions and cold has been normally good.”

“So we are really trying to develop the car that we don’t overheat the tyres but that becomes overall a negative that if we need to get temperature quickly into the tyres, some other cars can do it better than us.”

Miserable Imola

Bottas’ woeful performance at Imola stemmed from his lacklustre qualifying performance, where he got the eighth fastest time whilst team-mate Lewis Hamilton qualified on pole.

“For me, personally compared to Lewis, it was slower than average,” Bottas conceded. “Sometimes you get it to work like, for me in Q1, when I did a much faster time than in Q3 I got them to work, but for some reason, I couldn’t get them to work in the same way in Q3.

“It’s all about one or two degrees surface or core tyre temperature. It’s hard to explain,” Bottas concluded. Even in the race, Bottas was not doing anything to compensate for his qualifying disappointment.

Instead, he was criticized for almost being overtaken by a Williams’ car, even if he received sympathies for the crash. Presently, nothing is working in Bottas’ favour.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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