Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Circuit de Catalunya, 2018

Bottas on his crash: “In the moment it hurt a bit – I guess you earn that…”

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In the round-up: Valtteri Bottas describes his 27G hit with a Melbourne wall in qualifying.

What they’re saying

Here’s more of what Valtteri Bottas had to say about his qualifying crash:

First run in Q3, first corner, just tried to carry a lot of speed, it was wider than ideal and definitely was still a bit damp where I was. Got sudden wheelspin, couldn’t catch the rear any more and didn’t really want to lift any more. My mistake, just pushed a bit too hard in that corner trying to gain some time. But that cost me Q3 today and for us as a team a lot of extra work for tomorrow.

It was quite big, I haven’t had any big [crashes]. I feel it a bit but I’m glad everything’s fine and there’s no pain at the moment. In the moment it hurt a bit, I guess you earn that when you make a mistake like that. I’m fine, the car is not fine, it’s hopefully going to be OK.

I think tomorrow if we can get everything back together, obviously starting from a bit far [back], ought to be really fighting for the win. But there’s no point giving up on Saturdays. I think anything’s still possible. We’ve seen we have a good car in qualifying as Lewis showed. But we think we have a very good car in the race. I think anything’s possible from there. Melbourne can be plenty of things happening in the race, plenty of opportunity. I had a race last season when i was one lap down and still ended up second. So I think there’s still opportunities even though overtaking is difficult, hopefully less so with the third DRS zone. But we’ll try everything we can.

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Comment of the day

F1 cars are 10 seconds per lap quicker than when they first raced at Melbourne but is the racing better, worse or no different?

Other than Martin Brundle’s crash at the start, the 1996 Australian Grand Prix was pretty boring. Williams was untouchable and since Jacques Villeneuve had some technical issues, he wasn’t really able to compete with Damon Hill for the win, but still comfortably came second.

Sound familiar?
Markus (@Aesto)

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On this day in F1

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16 comments on “Bottas on his crash: “In the moment it hurt a bit – I guess you earn that…””

  1. We will see a better Bottas, you betcha!

    1. Either we see a better Bottas or we won’t see Bottas for long.

    2. It immediately sets the tone for his season. He knows he had to try to find something truly special to beat Hamilton and he obviously over-drove the car to its breaking point. He knows pushing the car too hard was his mistake. But deep down he knows why he was pushing the car and that is the bigger overall mistake.

      He needs to just sit back and play good #2 and not try to push the car beyond his limits to win a fight he’s never going to win. Be as close as comfortably possible, not going for the heroics. If he runs his own race and ends up where he belongs he might just find himself in the hunt for something if Ferrari and Red Bull are as competitive as they look season long.

      If he keeps trying to do things with the car he’s not capable of, then no, we won’t see a better Bottas at all.

  2. 2 of last 3 races a Merc has crashed out in qualifying. Timing is everything though, Hamiltons crash in Brazil meant nothing as Merc and Hamilton had both titles already. Bottas needs to be awesome for at least next 10 race weekends or I think he will be out.

  3. I totally agree with the new font type, just because it’s used on the logo, don’t need to use it everywhere. I also don’t like the on screen graphics as they are difficult to read on a phone/tablet,

  4. That article about McLaren had little detail apart from the 80 million number.

    But the growth potential of the team does look to be limited right now. Lack of money now, no new sponsors will come in if they are only good enough to be 1.2 seconds behind Red Bull, Alonso already doing double shift duty and putting his own brands on the car (no doubt as compensation for his reduced salary).

    I suspect that the decision to split with Honda may go down as one of the biggest own goals in the history of McLaren.

    1. I suspect that the decision to split with H̶o̶n̶d̶a̶ Mercedes may go down as one of the biggest own goals in the history of McLaren.

      Fixed that for you.

      1. angelic (@angelicdarkness)
        25th March 2018, 4:16

        Honda was more appropriate over here. I think Honda would have come good eventually. And then Mclaren would have been a works team with a good engine. The decision to split with mercedes was a gamble and required lots of perseverance. I still think Mclaren should have continued with Honda and they might have been a tad too hasty this year. They’ll be kicking themselves when Honda does come good for redbull to take over.

        1. Sorry, for some reason this site keeps glitching and randomly swallowing up comments.

          @angelicdarkness, the problem is that we’ve been hearing the same line that “Honda should come good eventually” for several years now, and we’re now approaching the point where the engine manufacturers will probably be beginning to shift resources from their current efforts to the proposed post 2020 regulations.

          They’d claimed in both 2016 and 2017 that they would overtake Renault by the end of the season (in 2016, they were even suggesting that they were aiming to match Ferrari by the end of the season), but given that their objective this season is to surpass Renault, it seems that they evidently failed to do that in the previous two seasons.

          Throughout last season, there were Honda fans who spoke of this mythical “Spec 4” engine that was apparently supposed to be introduced in 2017 as a major upgrade, but that engine never hit the track and, by the sounds of things, never will (the 2018 spec engine supposedly incorporates some components from the “Spec 4” engine, but is mainly based on the final iteration of Honda’s “Spec 3” engine from late 2017).

          Ahead of the tie-up, we’d heard Honda suggest that they could help Toro Rosso become the 4th best team in F1, and throughout the winter we’d heard both sides give each other effusive praise. However, come the first race, it now transpires that Gasly’s had an MGU-H failure in the race, whilst there is talk that an update to the combustion chamber that was supposed to have been coming in for the opening race has now been pushed back to later in the season.

          Now, it is true that Honda may well eventually come good, but at what cost to the team in the intermediate period? Yes, they might have had works backing, but the public acrimony between Honda and McLaren was not exactly good for the team in terms of sponsorship, nor in terms of staff morale. There just seemed to be a difference in culture and integration between Honda and McLaren that meant the relationship was somewhat dysfunctional and just not working that effectively, such that being a works backed effort seemed to be taking the team nowhere.

          That is not to say that McLaren are blameless, for rarely in these sorts of situations can all of the blame be put onto one party. Their 2017 car had a number of mechanical issues that were not down to Honda’s parts alone, whilst the team weren’t especially slick in terms of strategy or pit stops either. However, overall it looks like working with Honda just wasn’t helping to take either party towards the front of the grid, and Honda themselves admit that, having fallen short on their promised development rate, they ultimately lost the trust of McLaren in that relationship.

          Red Bull does at least have the luxury of being able to afford to take a risk with Toro Rosso, rather than with the main works team. Toro Rosso has been something of a proving ground for the parent team for both their drivers and for some of their more senior staff, so it’s not surprising that they’ve finally extended that to potential engine suppliers as well. If the engine works out OK, then they can afford to gamble themselves with the works team, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, for all the tough talk in public between Red Bull and Renault, Red Bull have made sure they still have the fallback option of Renault for 2019 and 2020.

        2. [McLaren will] be kicking themselves when Honda does come good for redbull to take over.

          @angelicdarkness – bear in mind that Red Bull are equally looking at Aston Martin as their 2021 engine partner. They are really hedging their bets by also supporting the Honda programme with Toro Rosso, as that will give them further choice.

  5. Thanks for the pointer about the F1 2017 game being free-to-play for today. While I’m not doing so, I have availed the offer where it is being sold at a 70% discount for the next 1.5 days.

    1. Last years games are always on sale somewhere for cheap. F1 2017 is really good even though I’m terrible at it. I’ve long understood I need to invest in a something greater than a controller to get more out of racing games. Someday, maybe, probably never

  6. I agree with COTD. Now a one that isn’t related to any of the linked articles: Bottas’ crash yesterday means that for two seasons in a row now a driver of a top-team (or any driver for that matter) has crashed in Q3, and then subsequently started from P15 following an unscheduled gearbox change.

    1. @jerejj

      Hopefully bottas starts on the opening lap itself this time, eh?

      1. @pratyushp276 Yes, hopefully indeed.

  7. I got really bored with all the negativity of the new look for F1 so here’s my opinion for them:

    1. The font is okay. It’s perfectly readable, I don’t need to squint or think more to read it other than any other font. Yes it’s very different compared to previous font but I’m getting used to it quickly.

    2. The HUD is also fine. They actually added a lot more than before. The tower has more information than it has before. The fonts are easily readable* (read below). Overall they actually increased the font size for important things so it’s much more easier to follow (like larger flying lap timing in qualy, race control messages).

    3. The only problem with HUD is when they used red font because image compression tend to make yjr red they used unreadable. In source HD stream I’ll believe it wont be a problem (had to download 1080p feed later to verify it). I watch from internet stream (until a better and legal alternative available to me) with a medium quality (480p). It only need 1.5MBps which what my connection can handle.

    4. There’s some addition that really good too, like purple sector notification and my favorite: turn number on most shots. The tower also improved with many extra info. Hardcore fans like we are probably don’t need those much, but it’ll very helpful for casuals or new fans.

    5. Yes the software is still unstable (the tower obviously rebooted sometimes) and some HUD is still missing. But it doesn’t mean what we have now it’s final. They can be added as the season progressed. Old HUD also don’t have all those info when they debuted but added over time.

    6. I noticed they finally formatted it for 16:9 wide screen. (previously still in 4:3 as you can see the gap from edge of the screen). This changes means they can improve the tower while keeping the center screen area still the same. Also it means more estate for bigger windows, especially since the font is wider now. Admittedly, I don’t know how it looks on old 4:3 SDTV format but getting 16:9 TV/monitor nowadays should easy enough for this to be non issue.

    + Halo effect on onboard cam is not as bad as some people said. While it look so big in screen, but you can see the tip of the nose and wheels, so in actuality the amount of road we can see is still the same.

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