Valtteri Bottas has been criticised for not being aggressive enough in trying to fight Lewis Hamilton in the British Grand Prix.
The Finn looked to have the edge on his Mercedes teammate going into Abbey at the start but would fall behind Hamilton, where he would then stay for the entire race.
Though of course there was the risk of a collision between the two drivers, given how difficult it is to overtake Lewis without a big speed advantage, ex-Renault driver Jolyon Palmer believes Bottas missed his best chance for victory.
“Obviously he was unlucky and the World Championship gap should be 12 points and not 30 but I do still feel Bottas’ whole race epitomised Bottas quite a lot,” he told the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast.
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“It’s tough because we are comparing him against one of the greats, maybe the greatest ever. But he had the best start, he was alongside Hamilton and he blended out of the throttle at Turn 1. No! Keep your foot in!
“That’s your chance to win the Grand Prix right there and he got out of the throttle.
“Maybe Bottas has a big slide and there is an explanation for it [lifting off] but from the outside, he is fully alongside Hamilton and he has got to keep his foot there.
“He has earned the right to be alongside in what is a flat out corner and he could have least made Hamilton defend at Turn 3 and put pressure on him.
“The race could change in that instant but, again, if he doesn’t beat Hamilton out of the first corner, he won’t beat him.”
Throughout the race, the gap between the two all-black Silver Arrows was rarely above two seconds until a late puncture dealt Bottas a huge blow in his Formula 1 championship aspirations as he dropped to 11th in the final standings.
Even that, though, didn’t sit well with Palmer.
“Bottas has got solid pace and we know that, but it’s the aggression and the wheel-to-wheel stuff that was epitomised again on the last lap,” he said.
“Valtteri was on soft tyres and Max [Verstappen], who was also on soft tyres for the last lap, did a lap that was almost five seconds quicker than Sebastian Vettel. Max did a 1:27.0 and Vettel a 1:31.7.
“Bottas is side by side with Vettel, with that level of pace in his car, maybe there was a bit of damage to it which could let him off the hook here, but either way he has a much quicker car and Vettel still held on to P10 at the line.”
As for any suggestions Bottas wasn’t pushing Hamilton, however, the late punctures showed Mercedes was pretty near the limit and team boss Toto Wolff was happy to let them race.
“He was pressurising him,” he said of the Finn. “But at a certain point we were looking at the tyre data and thought this is not great, they’re pushing each other too much.
“But we didn’t interfere, we just warned them that they could be running out of tyre at the end.”
And that of course, they did.
