Valtteri Bottas had another difficult weekend at the Qatar Grand Prix. Bottas initially crossed the finish line in qualifying in P3, but started the race from P6 after his penalties. But the Finn didn’t get off to a good start and fell back into the field. To make his misery worse, his tire burst on the hard tire after 33 laps. Mercedes track engineer Andrew Shovlin explains why Bottas didn’t pit earlier.
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Despite his bad start, Bottas had a chance of third place in the race. He had to outsmart and outwit Fernando Alonso, who was occupying the P3 slot.
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Shovlin explains why they delayed the pit stop at Valtteri Bottas
In the post-race debriefing, Shovlin mentioned that the team was running Valtteri’s race against Alonso. But in their eagerness to overtake the two-time world champion, the Finn suffered a heartbreaking tire damage.
“Specifically, we tried to delete Alonso. He was on relatively fresh hard tires in our pit window. Valtteri was faster, he found a couple tenths per lap and if we’d stayed out three or four laps we could have built that window on Alonso.
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Formula 1 F1 – Qatar Grand Prix – Losail International Circuit, Lusail, Qatar – November 21, 2021, Mercedes Valtteri Bottas in action REUTERS / Thaier Al-Sudani
Box Valtteri for new hard tires and fall out in front. So that was the plan. Well, as you can see, we had this flat tire. The timing for that was really unfortunate. Valtteri felt it when we saw it in the data. But it was too late to get into the pit lane, so we had the full lap ahead of us, ”said Shovlin.
Ultimately, Bottas had to end the race. It not only cost the Finns in their pursuit of P3 in the drivers ‘championship, but also Mercedes in the constructors’ battle.
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Red Bull was able to reduce the deficit in the constructors’ championship to just 5 points. With only two races left, Mercedes is hoping that Bottas will get back in shape and help the German team win the title for the eighth time in a row.
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The post Mercedes F1 director explains why they made the costly mistake of not defeating Valtteri Bottas sooner first appeared on monter-une-startup.
