When Mercedes confirmed that they would be replacing the unit in Valtteri Bottas’ car in Sochi for the second time in a row, there was a scream on social media.
Bottas originally qualified for the race in seventh place, but was relegated to 16th place on the grid due to the penalty suffered by Mercedes for changing parts of its engine. They fitted his fifth engine, turbocharger and MGU-H of the season and took him further past the maximum allocation of three per driver. Mercedes said the change was made for “tactical” reasons.
In response, allegations have been leveled that the team sacrificed Bottas to help Lewis Hamilton get ahead of championship rival Max Verstappen.
This claim was based on the assumption that Bottas would contain Verstappen during the race. If that was his mission, he failed, because on the sixth lap, Verstappen drove into the interior of the Mercedes at turn 13 and Bottas offered no trace of resistance.
Bottas was “fair” with Verstappen, said Horner. Red Bull couldn’t be accused of being reluctant to criticize its championship rivals this year, but they weren’t among those who claimed Mercedes had sacrificed Bottas. Verstappen was asked during the pre-race drivers parade if he believed they were trying to disrupt his race and resisted. “You’d have to ask her,” he said.
Team boss Christian Horner also missed the opportunity to pocket his boot after the race in an interview with the media. He also pointed out that Bottas was embarrassingly fair in dealing with Verstappen when they met on the route.
“I don’t know the reasons for this,” said Horner. “It was said ‘tactically’ before the race.
“I thought Valtteri was fair to Max when they rode bike to bike. He wasted no time overtaking him. And that was an important step in the race. “
Horner’s team has already exceeded the drive unit for their two drivers, partly due to damage, and suspected that the move from Mercedes for Bottas was for similar reasons.
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“Obviously they have problems that we all deal with. We concentrate very much on our own issues and not on Mercedes. “
Mercedes expected that overtaking in Sochi would be easier. After the race, Mercedes Horner made a similar statement, citing concerns about the condition of their power units. They also said they would have reconsidered their decision to swap Bottas’ engine parts once they realized how difficult it would be to overtake in Sochi.
This was the second race in a row Bottas was moved to the rear of the field by changing the engine. In Monza he climbed from 20th to third place, but in Sochi he headed for an unrated goal until a late shower gave him the opportunity to move up the ranking.
The team’s head of line operations, Andrew Shovlin, said they wanted to change the engine on the number 77 car to inspect it. But he admitted that they might have waited for a later race if they thought Bottas would find overtaking so difficult.
“We need to investigate this engine further and look at this in Brixworth. But it was just like looking at where he qualified and figuring we might have to take another one at some point. We simply decided on it and installed a new unit.
“But when we made the decision we thought it would be a race where we could recover more easily than we did. I think since we knew how difficult it was to overtake, we might have seen it differently.
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“But it was really only one case that we cut off with the wet qualifying and not at the level of the car that this would be the logical time to take it.”
Shovlin said the drop in temperature on the track between Friday and Sunday made overtaking in the race more difficult than expected.
“[In] Due to the cooler conditions, the front tires had a hard time and we understeered a bit. While the rear axles were the axle that suffered the most on Friday, it was the front axle here.
“If you can’t follow in the last four corners, you can’t get close enough to overtake. It was really the car balance. But I think the cooler conditions made it more difficult rather than easier. “
Undoubtedly, some Formula 1 teams have done more cynical things than prematurely – or unnecessarily – changing a driver’s engine to help their teammate in the championship. And Bottas already helped Hamilton in Sochi. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was this time.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
Russian Grand Prix 2021
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