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Valtteri Bottas is a lot; he’s reliable, consistent, someone Lewis Hamilton probably “ accidentally ” calls Heikki more often than he should, an excellent Rubens Barrichello type number two and a Finn who looks good in black. However, he’s not a championship-caliber Formula 1 driver, and after nearly four years of getting his ass fucked by F1 GOAT and his teammate Lewis Hamilton, he could finally achieve it on his own.
Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix saw Bottas move from second on the grid to fourth as a poor start allowed both Max Verstappen’s Red Bull and Lance Stroll’s Racing Point to pass. Bottas had the speed to come back through Stroll for third, but even on the new soft tires he couldn’t close the gap to Max for second. Meanwhile, Hamilton dominated the race from the front, crushing the competition from fire to the checkered flag, leading the entire GP and finishing everyone to third. Barcelona are not really a good lead to pass, so it’s not an indictment from Bottas that he couldn’t make one. He’s still a great driver, but he’s not even close to Hamilton’s level.
“The initial analysis is just a bad start,” Bottas says of his performance in Spain. “I think the first getaway from the row wasn’t good enough, and my reaction time could have been a bit better, so it’s just not the perfect start when it needed to be.
“And on that track, if the guys behind you get towed and you don’t and your start isn’t better, you pay the price, then that’s it. At first disappointed of course, it is far from ideal.
With his failure to score points at the British Grand Prix two weeks ago, a run of points for third place pretty much counted Bottas out of the championship unless Lewis had a particularly difficult streak of really bad. luck. And even then, Bottas is probably not good enough to bring the deficit to Verstappen either.
Bottas knows it’s bad. He watches his championship hopes “go away”.
“I have no idea the difference between the points, but it’s way too big. And I can see the championship pull away again. So we’re going to take a few days to look at everything and see what’s wrong. And again, move on.
“But obviously at this point, very disappointing, but yeah, I know I’ll always bounce back, and without a doubt at Spa, as always, I’ll be in full sanity, giving everything I’ve got. But for now, I just want to be somewhere other than here now.
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This points difference currently has Lewis up front with 132 points, Max in second with 95 points and Bottas sitting on 89 points. Bottas is currently averaging 15 points per Grand Prix, while Lewis’ average is 22 points. Damn, at this point Lewis could take a weekend off and still have the points leading the championship. It’s not totally insurmountable, but I mean, come on.
“Right now, I can’t tell. I got off to a good start in the first race, and the pace all season, every race the pace was there. Qualifying was very close every time with Lewis, sometimes he beats me, sometimes I beat him. These are small margins.
“So I don’t know the reason at the moment. There were some crappy races for me at Silverstone, with some bad luck. At this point, it’s hard to say. Maybe when the time goes by I can say, for now I don’t have an answer.
“Apart from the first race, it was pretty bad. There hasn’t been a weekend that has gone well and without a problem, other than the first one, so a pretty bad season so far. Obviously this is disappointing.
“So yeah, nice to take a break.” Hopefully we still have a lot of races to go, maybe even up to 10 or something like that. I hope so. So far, far from ideal.
Bottas has been with the Mercedes-AMG Patronas F1 team since the 2017 season, and during that time he won eight respectable Grands Prix. In the same time span, Lewis won thirty-five races in the same gear. Their points have been divided over the seasons between 2017 and now? Bottas has 967 points as a Mercedes F1 driver. Since the start of the 2017 season, Lewis has scored 1316 points.
Did Valtteri really think he had a championship chance in 2020? He knows who his teammate is, right?
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