Valtteri Bottas hoping Mercedes issues have been eradicated for Silverstone

Mercedes

Bottas hoping Mercedes issues have been eradicated for Silverstone

Human and technical problems have compromised the Finn's last two races

Ian Parkes

Friday 31 July 2020 10:15

Valtteri Bottas is hoping there is no repeat of the technical and human errors from Mercedes that have blighted his last two races.

After strolling to victory in the season-opening race in Austria, for the following two weekends Bottas encountered issues en route to finishing runner-up in the second race at the Red Bull Ring and third in the last grand prix in Hungary.

In the wet qualifying for the Styrian Grand Prix, the ride height on Bottas' W11 was incorrectly set, which may have played a part in the glazing of a brake disc and his starting grid slot of fourth, nearly 1.5 seconds adrift of team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

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At the Hungaroring, another glitch in qualifying resulted in his car being over-fuelled, adding marginally to his lap times.

For the race, Bottas was caught out by lights flashing on his dashboard that averted his gaze from the starting lights above the start-finish straight, leading him to drop from second on the grid to sixth heading into the first corner.

With regard to the lights malfunction, Bottas said: "We did a pretty good analysis of the start, as we always do, but it was even more regarding that. It was simply the rev lights on the dash.

"We've made changes so it doesn't happen again and I don't get that kind of distraction at the race start that could lead to a mistake like that, so changes have been made for that not to happen again."

As for the fuelling error, Bottas, who goes into this weekend's British Grand Prix trailing Hamilton by five points in the drivers' standings, remarked: "We [also] found that as part of the analysis from last week.

"There was an issue with the fuelling system, something with where the pipe or the vent goes, so it was around two kilos, or a bit more, over-fuelled in qualifying, which I think they said was [worth] eight-hundredths per lap.

"That was throughout the qualifying after Q1, so I'm sure the team has rectified that and learned again from that. Hopefully, it won't happen again. It's not ideal when we are speaking about milli-seconds in qualifying."

Bottas finished 0.107s adrift of Hamilton in Q3, so arguably it did not cost him pole.

As for the ride-height issue, that was not as worrying as Bottas said: "We are speaking about a few millimetres, just a human error.

"I don't think it made a massive difference, maybe more so in the wet, but for the race, I don't think it was a bad thing actually."

Before you go...

Ferrari predict a demoralising double-header at Silverstone

Hamilton set for "lonely" British Grand Prix weekend