Toto Wolff, Mercedes Formula 1 team boss, understands the frustration of Valtteri Bottas. He was stuck as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate at Bahrain Grand Prix.
Wolff believes there was no other option available for the team, other than to compromise Bottas’ position. He finished at third place behind Hamilton and Max Verstappen. He claimed fastest lap and point through a third pitstop near the end of the race.
At the start of race, Bottas lost his position to Charles Leclerc from Ferrari. It took Finnish driver’s capacity to win the race. He reclaimed his position from Leclerc but Hamilton and Verstappen were out of his reach.
Only possible solution for Mercedes was to optimized Hamilton’s chances of winning the season opener. It pushed the team to revolve race strategy around it.
Bottas had a slow second pitstop, when the team faced a wheel gun issue. It further compromised his chances of winning the race.
Bottas shared his opinion on the team’s strategy during post race media interaction. He also showed his disappointment on the defensive strategy.
“Disappointing for sure,” he said. “Good for the team as we got good points, but from my side strategy-wise we went on the defensive side instead of attacking, which I’m quite surprised by and it’s not quite normal.
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“Then I had a slow pitstop and that took away any opportunities.
“For sure we managed to have the two cars [up front] and that way we could play with the strategy but I still think from my side there was more to get today.”
Wolff explained that Bottas compromised his chances by letting Leclerc pass him at the start of the race. He believes the only possible strategy was adopted and optimized in favor of team.
“I think there wasn’t any strategy on the table,” Wolff said, “Because we tried to undercut also with Valtteri that I think would change race for him.
“The outcome we didn’t wish for was that he lost a position at the start of the race and he kind of couldn’t recover the gap to the two guys in front. The pitstop was there to undercut Max and I think we would probably have been successful, but we had a problem with the right front wheel gun.”
Wolff understand Bottas frustration due to unavailable information.
He said: “I totally understand the frustration in the car when you have limited information and say: ‘I think we could have done something else.’
“I don’t know what other strategy we could have run. The one stop was clearly not possible, the medium wouldn’t have made it to the end, the hard in the middle stage was running out of performance.
“There was no other option available.”
