Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas admits he’s at a loss to explain why he didn’t have more pace in his fight against team-mate Lewis Hamilton at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
After dropping to second place behind McLaren’s Carlos Sainz on lap two, Bottas regained the lead a handful of laps later, and held a consistent gap to Hamilton for some time.
However, Hamilton managed to reel his Finnish team-mate in and overtake him for the lead on lap 20, stretching out a 25-second lead by the end of the race, leaving Bottas to take the chequered flag in second place.
“The start was nice, I think maybe it looked quite odd but there was actually a lot of rain so it was slippery, especially with the Medium tyre against the Soft,” Bottas said.
“You lose quite a bit with those conditions. That was probably the highlight of the race for me, after that I couldn’t really match the pace of Lewis.
“I don’t know the reason why, but when he got close to me and overtook me, for me there was nothing to do. I was trying but couldn’t go any faster.
“I don’t think tyre management today was the issue, it was more the pace. I don’t have an answer at the moment, we’ll look at everything.”
When Bottas made his only pit stop of the race, he requested the Soft compound to counter Hamilton’s Hards, however he was placed on the same tyres as Hamilton for the remainder of the race.
Bottas, who pitted on lap 41 of 66, explained that the stint on the Soft tyres would’ve been too long, risking a tyre failure.
“I did ask for the Soft tyres because I thought it was, for me, the best thing to – something different,” Bottas said. “The gap was already pretty big at that point.
“But then the Medium tyres started to wear, we started to have some vibrations, which meant the tyres were going to be really finished.
“There’s always the risk of a tyre failure, so the safest thing, at the end, was to go for the Hards, just to get the points.”
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