Valtteri Bottas admitted it was “not my day” after debris from Sebastian Vettel compromised his race on Sunday.
The Mercedes driver held onto the lead at the start but was shadowed throughout the first stint by Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Imola, with the reasoning soon becoming clear.
“The start was good, and that was one of the main things to get right today,” Bottas said afterwards.
“On Lap 2, suddenly out of Tosa, there was debris. I didn’t have time to avoid it. I aimed in the middle of the car at least, and tried not to run over that with the tyres.
“But obviously it caused some damage or something which made the car quite tricky to drive.”
That debris, it later transpired, was the front wing endplate from Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari following his contact with Kevin Magnussen on the opening lap.
Still, Bottas saw off an undercut attempt by the Red Bull in the pit-stop phase, as overtaking proved very difficult, but their stops freed up Hamilton to run long in his first stint and open up a pit-stop margin before a brief Virtual Safety Car offered the perfect moment to pit and resume ahead.
Verstappen too would later capitalise on a mistake by Valtteri at Rivazza to move up to second, only for a tyre failure to force him into retirement a few laps later.
However, once back in P2, despite the Safety Car caused by the Dutchman’s off allowing him back on Hamilton’s tail, the Finn had no response.
“How it affected me, I’d say mainly in high-speed corners the car was sliding a bit,” he explained.
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“In some braking [zones] it was a bit unpredictable. Sometimes I would lock the wheels and sometimes it was stopping pretty quickly. So it was not really consistent the downforce I had on the car, so it made it really tricky. I didn’t quite have the pace.
“Max was putting a lot of pressure on and eventually he got through because I had to push over my limits to try to maintain my position and had a lock-up.
“Not my day. I didn’t have a chance with that debris on the car to fight for the win. But at least we secured the one-two which is the perfect way to secure the seventh [constructors’] title for the team in a row.”