Valtteri Bottas admits he might have looked “like a fool” at the Sakhir Grand Prix to anyone who did not understand the context of his and George Russell‘s race.
Bottas narrowly beat stand-in teammate Russell to pole position but was beaten into Turn 1 and played second fiddle for most of the race. Mercedes junior Russell raced in place of world champion Lewis Hamilton, who tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of the event.
Russell would likely have won the race were it not for a Mercedes pit stop gaffe and a puncture late in the race, while Bottas struggled to make a fight of it.
When asked if the result was more difficult to stomach as he was being outperformed by a stand-in rather than Hamilton, Bottas replied: “Well, no.
“Obviously in the race I just try to make the most out of it. I knew that it’s going to be a long race ahead so I don’t think about these kind of things.
“But now thinking about it, if you don’t know things I might have looked like a complete … fool, you know? So that’s not nice.
“It was a pretty bad race for me from that side. It will be very easy or people to say that a new guy comes in and beats the guy who’s been in the team for a few years. So it was not ideal.
“But the people who know, they know how the performance and how the end result could have been.
“So, I don’t know what to say really. Not ideal as a weekend.”
Bottas insisted the race was not over when the safety car came out and triggered Mercedes’ decision to double-stack its drivers, which led to them fitting the wrong tyres to Russell’s car, which in turn forced them to leave Bottas out on a used set of tyres.
Despite being eight seconds back when the safety car came out, Bottas was confident he could have made a fight of it out in front.
“The race was not finished when we had the thing with the pit stops, which obviously changed everything. I managed to go a bit longer on the medium tyre. That would have definitely opened up opportunities for me on the hard tyre. My pace on the hard tyre was good and I was catching him.
“Just in the first stint, with a bit of balance issues and being in dirty air, I couldn’t get closer. That’s it.”
