I'm not defending him. As you know I was one of his biggest supporters and now even I agree his time is up . But they are all kicking him now and that's not right imho.
Like I've said in the past, Jasp... I've got nothing against the bloke at all, but he's gotta up his game somehow. With Perez looking like he might be getting to grips with the Red Bull, Merc are going to need another car fighting at the front, otherwise both titles could be in jeopardy. If I were making the decisions, I'd most certainly be considering a mid-season driver swap, as harsh as that is.
Yes I agree . I think I have gone on record as saying he is lucky Toto seems loyal. If it was not for that I would see him being subbed soon .
Not sure how they can motivate him, other than saying, pull ya bootstraps up, help us deliver both titles and there's another contract in it for you.. but pretty sure they want Russell soon, so that's out. Maybe a massive financial bonus? No clue.
I think Bottas, unfortunately, has had his day and he knows he doesn't have a Merc seat or much chance of another F1 seat next year. It must be so gutting to be against Lewis and losing virtually every time no matter how well he qualifies etc. To be fair to him he is a good driver that is getting beat by his team mate week in week out, it must be soul destroying.
It can't be fun, but on his day he's had some really good races. Which is baffling why he struggles to be like that consistently.
That's it in a nutshell. I would describe him as competent rather than inspired. On his day with a good car and good strategy he will make it work but he won't ever pull something unexpected out of the bag. He won't create anything. Only some drivers have that.
Maybe... but he has had days/weekends where he's untouchable. Not an easy thing to do against Hamilton.
Makes you realise how damn meticulous Rosberg must have been to get in the fight with Lewis. He is an underrated WDC without a doubt.
I've always been of that opinion. He was a quick driver and worked his backside off to become WDC. He could really mix it with Hamilton too and was never intimidated.
Bottas is driving a Mercedes, not a Williams, not a Haas or an Alpha Tauri. At one stage he was 14th/15th and the car within 2 seconds of him was Russell, in a Williams. Yes Hamilton made a mistake at the restart and didn’t finish in the points but neither did Bottas, again. That isn’t hanging Bottas out to dry. Mercedes were wrong to say what they did after the last race, but Bottas has no excuse for being utter rubbish this week.
He gave Hamilton the tow in qualifying that gave him the starting position that he got but got no such favours himself, which accounts for much of the difference in grid position. That said, when he is stuck well down the order he just doesn't seem to be able to carve himself out. But nor did Hamilton in Monaco.
He was on it in Monaco. Best performance in a little while, so Toto throwing him under the bus was bloody ridiculous. Shameful really. Seemed like an RBR move.
In F1 you live and die by results, as Gasly and Albon found out at Red Bull. Regardless of where Bottas started the race today, the only cars faster than the Mercedes today were the Red Bulls, yet he went backwards in the race, not forwards.
If you're not willing to back your driver both in public and in private, you're going to lose them mentally. What happened in Monaco was not even anywhere near being his fault. It was either a manufacturing fault, a cross threaded nut, or a balls up by the gun man. It's gotta be hard turning up to work after that. So while he was well off it. He gets my sympathy to an extent at least.
to be fair to him everyone around him pitted as soon as they could after the Stroll crash, then he pitted on the 2nd for softs, and everyopne else got a free red flag tyre change. He's an F1 Jonah.
Vettel was tremendous today, but he really was helped by everyone else bottling it to change off the softs way too early. Sparked by Ferrari calling CLC in as he was dropping places (naturally, seeing as he massively overperformed in qualifying). Perez was rattling in fastest laps when RBR called him in, and when they all came out on hards, Seb was barely any slower than them on the used softs. Very strange tactical decisions going on today. But great race, and lovely to see some of the old Seb back.
I tend to switch off as soon as the race is finished, as I’m not keen on the bits that follow, so I was unaware Toto had said anything? My comment was based purely what I’ve been seeing for a number of races and I thought today he was particularly poor.
Basically, Toto blamed Bottas for the botched stop in Monaco because he was a few millimeters off his marks at the stop. Which seems utter guff.