Valtteri Bottas expressed disappointment at his Monaco Grand Prix result, as he lost further ground to Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Formula 1’s title fight.
Bottas missed out on pole position by just 0.086s, pinning a scruffy final Q3 effort on out-lap traffic that hurt his tyre preparation, but maintained second at the start.
However, the Finn was involved in an incident with Max Verstappen in the pit lane, with the Dutchman unsafely released into Bottas’ path.
Verstappen was sanctioned for the incident but Mercedes feared that Bottas’ brush with the pit wall had resulted in a puncture and brought him in for a precautionary change.
That dropped him behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, and while Verstappen’s penalty promoted Bottas from an on-the-road fourth to third, he slipped 17 points behind Hamilton in the standings.
“We had a bit of a gap between us for the stop but I don’t know, for some reason my stop was a bit slow,” said Bottas.
“Max got alongside me on the pit lane, even though he was behind before and in the pit lane he was slightly ahead but we were side-by-side.
“I kept my line, he kept drifting to the right. We touched, I also touched a wall because there was no space.
“I got a puncture for that, but honestly, I thought that when I got the puncture and had to stop again, that I was going to be at the back of the grid but luckily only lost a couple of places.
“So, unlucky but lucky at the same time. Could have been a lot worse. Still, important points, obviously disappointing going backwards from where you start from – sometimes it goes like this.”
Bottas felt that he had sufficient performance in hand throughout the race but had to settle for third.
“Definitely there was a lot of pace left and I was kind of trying to see if I could get anywhere close to the fastest lap but a lot of pace,” he said
“Honestly the whole race felt like a Sunday drive around Monaco. It was a bit of a shame but that’s how it is sometimes.”
