Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas said his disappointing run to fifth at the Abu Dhabi GP purely summed up his entire 2018 Formula 1 season as it turned “to shit” after promising start. It was clear that he was not happy with that.
The Finn had everything to keep his second place at the start of the race, behind his teammate Lewis Hamilton. But things turned sour in the second half of the race as car problem and errors, falling behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and the two Red Bull’s drivers Max Verstappen dan Daniel Ricciardo.
“Overall the race sums up the season quite well, it started off quite well and then everything turns to shit. I initially had a lock-up into Turn 5 when Sebastian got close, and then he got DRS and over took me.” Bottas said.
“I thought it was purely my mistake, which in the end it was, but the wind suddenly turned around, so I would’ve had to brake a bit earlier for the wind, fair enough.
“At the same time, the team found some vibration on the rear right brake and some issue, so sometimes the front brakes had to work harder than the rear brakes to compare and that meant there were sudden lock-ups.
“The same thing happened when I went straight at Turn 8 and Verstappen got close. So, we still need to investigate what was exactly the issue with the brakes.” Bottas added.
Valtteri Bottas finishes fourth in this season with 237 points and his teammate Lewis Hamilton wins fifth F1 world title. (Source:www.news.com.au)
When asked about the Bottas’ underwhelming raace, team boss Toto Wolff did not hide the sad reality. The Austrian boss confirmed that some odd breaking behavior was observed on the right rear of Bottas’ car.
“He was really good all the way to Baku. He would have won without a puncture and led the championship. After a long time to preserve, I think that when you have no more view of the title, you give up and mentally damaging,” Wolff said.
“I hope that’s not the case, he says no, he’s a solid Finn and a warrior, but now we will use the winter to reboost it and put it back in its place,” Wolff added.
