“I was surprised”– Valtteri Bottas shocked with Mercedes blaming him for failed pitstop

“I was surprised”– Valtteri Bottas is shocked by Mercedes placing blame on him for the failed pitstop in Monaco, which led to a DNF.

Valtteri Bottas had a sure shot at the podium in Monaco but was denied one, as his disastrous pitstop in the middle of the race forced him to discontinue his participation.

The screw stuck in the tyre was then retrieved 43 hours after the debacle. Mercedes later revealed that a slight angle caused by Bottas in the pitstop was the factor behind it, but the Finn was shocked knowing this argument.

“Yes, I was surprised. I saw the video, and for me it was pretty spot on, where I stopped, so I was quite surprised,” he said. Bottas then revealed that the data available to him showed him inside a tolerable level of deviance.

“We analysed, everything in detail and we know that we probably could have done a better job as a team, and with the pitstop of course, you know, it was very normal, debrief from my side,” he explained.

“Of course I wanted to see all the reports about where I stopped. I think I was like two or three centimetres off the central line. And, if you get that accuracy normally, it’s pretty good. You know, you can easily swing by 10-15 centimetres so I thought it was pretty spot on.”

Warned of poor pitstops

Bottas instead threw in a reversal at Mercedes and claimed that he has been warning the management about the poor pitstops being made by the team way before the Monaco race.

“It was one of my concerns already a few weeks ago that I raised with the team,” he said. “So you know it didn’t come from somewhere out of the blue; we knew that we are not perfect in pitstops as we’ve seen.

“And also other areas like tyre warm up in qualifying. I knew coming to Monaco that it is going to be an issue and it was one of the things that I highlighted much before the weekend.”

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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