Valtteri Bottas was furious by the end of his race in France, as the Finn race driver warned his race engineer, the race to be a two-step race, but Mercedes stuck to one-stop strategy, losing the race against Red Bull.
Despite the result Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was delighted with his performance, as he understood that P4 was a good decision with Red Bull’s tactics.
“I still think Valtteri did a good race,” the team boss told Formule1.com. “He was very close to Max and Lewis for much of the race. In terms of tyre management, it’s also going in the right direction.”
“There is still a difference between Valtteri and Lewis in that respect, but I really see progress in how Valtteri handles the races. And we’ve never had any doubts about his qualifying.”
Also Read : McLaren F1 Team Principle Andreas Seidl confident of Ricciardo for Austrian Grand Prix
Toto Wolff talks about Bottas leaving Mercedes rumors
Lately, it has been speculated that Bottas would be heading out of Mercedes after the end of the year, and would be replaced by Mercedes driving programme graduate- George Russell.
When asked about this to Wolff, the Austrian replied that Bottas knows what he has to do this year to ward off these rumours from all the outlets’ headlines. “Valtteri knows that performing on the track is the only answer to all these rumours.”
However, it doesn’t appear that Bottas has much time left with Hamilton and Mercedes, the latter was even accused of not keeping up with the team spirit. The management has also apparently been avoiding him on the radio.
This signalling that Mercedes is ready to implant its own prodigy by hiring the Briton next year
Also Read : Lewis Hamilton touts Red Bull favouite for Austria double-header
