The Finn had to retire at the Monaco GP after Mercedes was unable to remove its front right tire during a stop.
The face of the wheel nuts had been machined after the weapon was slanted, and the team could not remove the wheel until it returned to its Brackley base.
Mercedes felt that the slight angle caused by Bottas arriving in his pit was one factor in the gun not going straight, but the Finn wasn’t that convinced he’d done anything out of the ordinary.
When asked if he was surprised that Mercedes had taken him out of his position, Bottas said: “Yes, I was surprised. I saw the video and for me it was pretty much where I left off so I was pretty surprised. “
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Bottas said the data he saw at the Monaco GP debrief showed he was just inches away – which is well within normal tolerance limits.
“We analyzed everything in detail and we know that we could probably have done a better job as a team, and with the pit stop, of course, it was completely normal to have a debriefing on my part,” he said.
“Of course I wanted to see all the reports about where I stopped. I think I was two or three inches from the center line. And when you get that accuracy normally, it’s pretty good. You know, you can stop by 10 / Six inches, so I thought it was pretty much right. “
Bottas also announced that he was concerned about possible weaknesses in Mercedes’ pit stop procedures ahead of the Monaco GP.
“It was one of my concerns a few weeks ago that I raised with the team,” he said. “So you know it didn’t come out of the blue, we knew we weren’t perfect in pit stops as we’ve seen.
“And other areas too, like warming up the tires in qualifying. I knew it would be a problem getting to Monaco and that was one of the things that I emphasized a lot before the weekend.”
Bottas said Mercedes, however, had learned important lessons from the Monaco issue that should help prevent a repeat in the future.
“We as a team had to maximize the learning from it,” he said. “There was of course a detailed analysis of what happened, why it happened and how we can prevent it [so it] never occurs again in the future.
“So it’s really about learning and correcting the problem. I think the team has now fully understood and we have made corrections and hopefully we don’t have to go through it again.”
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