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Bottas has "no answers" for Spa struggles
Valtteri Bottas is at a loss to explain why he struggled for pace at the Belgian Grand Prix, as he dismissed suggestions he just got his set-up slightly wrong.
Jonathan Noble
Edited: Aug 29, 2017, 5:57 PM
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The Finn endured a difficult weekend at Spa-Francorchamps as he found himself unable to properly threaten teammate Lewis Hamilton in terms of pure speed. He eventually came home fifth.
But despite theories that his weekend was the result of his W08 falling out of its narrow set-up window - something that has happened to Hamilton on a number of occasions this year - Bottas was not convinced that was the issue in this case.
“I don’t think so, because we were more or less similar with the set-up to Lewis, and he was performing well all weekend," the Finn said.
"Also the first stint with the ultrasoft his pace was pretty good. I wouldn’t put it down to set-up.
“Honestly, at this point, I have no idea and it’s something I need to look at carefully before next weekend.”
The Spa weekend was the first time this season that Bottas had endured such a consistently difficult time, and he said it was important to understand what the causes were.
“This is a great opportunity for me to learn a lot because I’ve been on the back foot the whole weekend, and there are opportunities for learning,” he said.
“I don’t yet know the reasons, but the only positive is we as a team won the race and for me the pace in the second stint with the soft was okay. Other than that, it was a struggle.”
Bottas said his form in the race was hurt by a simple lack of traction – which contributed to Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen jumping him at the safety car restart.
“Initially in the first stint, it felt like I was lacking a bit of pace, like the whole weekend,” he said. “It was difficult to see exactly where I was losing out.
“The second stint seemed okay on the soft tyre, and pace-wise I was matching the guys in front, even catching up a little bit.
“I don’t know, I have no answers. I could see when I was behind Kimi that out of the last corner and out of Turn 1 I was definitely losing out on traction quite a bit. I don’t know, honestly.”
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