“I can’t remember having this kind of weekend before”– Valtteri Bottas seeks answers after his abysmal performance in Azerbaijan

“I can’t remember having this kind of weekend before”– Valtteri Bottas seeks answers after his horrible defeat in Azerbaijan.

Valtteri Bottas had another underwhelming outing with Mercedes, as he even failed to finish in the points bracket by the time he passed the finish line.

Now, the Finnish race driver has explained his struggles and informed that he lacked pace in his car, and he intends to review his performance with the team.

“Mainly the main issue was the lack of pace, and just not being quick enough,” said Bottas. “Quite early on in the race I could see that I just couldn’t quite match the cars ahead, especially when the Aston Martin was ahead of me, I just couldn’t keep up. Still, I’m confused and it’s really weird.”

Bottas has failed to score any points with Mercedes for the two consecutive races, as his previous race in Monaco finished as a DNF with a pit-stop error.

Different rear wings not the issue

Both Mercedes drivers ran the race with different variants of the rear wings from each other. However, when speculated that it could be the reason behind his comparatively poor performance against Hamilton, Bottas dismissed the possibility.

“It’s something we need to review,” Bottas said. “But we know it’s not going to be much – it’s going to be, maximum, one-tenth [of a second], so I don’t think that’s the key thing.

“We started the weekend with the same wing, and I’ve been behind Lewis all the time by quite a big margin. I can’t remember having this kind of weekend before. Yes, there were a few weekends where I’ve had bad sessions, but always, at some point, I had the pace.

“I know myself where the limit is, and I cannot go faster than this, still six, seven, eight tenths behind. It’s not normal, so it’s something we need to understand before going to France.”

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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