It was another frustrating race as Valtteri Bottas squandered a great chance to gain ground in the championship at the Italian Grand Prix.
Starting second, the Mercedes driver had another good opportunity to challenge teammate Lewis Hamilton on the long run to the Retafilo chicane at the start at Monza.
Instead, a slow launch saw him fall back behind Carlos Sainz within just a few metres and Bottas revealed the cause was a near-repeat of the events in Hungary back in July.
“Yes, I had an issue with the actual reaction to the lights,” he said via Crash.net
“We’ve been playing around with the way we do practice, the protocol we use. We’ve changed that a bit and I feel that has been a disturbance, sometimes, to the actual starts. It has not really been represented in the starts.
“I cannot go into much more detail but from my side, I nearly went before the lights, but luckily not as much as in one of the first races – I can’t remember which one – so I was a bit late reacting to the lights. Just things still to work on.
“The actual launch, after we drop the clutch, is actually fine and we’ve made good progress but just getting the consistency in the reaction to the lights, there’s work to do.”
After Sainz had gone through, Bottas then lost out to Lando Norris, Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo all on Lap 1, with the Finn reporting a suspected puncture on the radio.
“We just had a debrief and there was nothing from the car that we could see for now, maybe later. Just from my side, I had two contacts: I had one in Turn 2 and then a slightly bigger one in Turn 5 [with Norris], but still not like a massive contact.
“In Turn 6 I was on the outside and had quite a bit of understeer, then in Turn 7, I had quite a bit of understeer that it felt like a puncture. Then, out of Turn 7, the car was pulling a little bit to the right and to the left, so it didn’t feel right, so I was convinced I had a puncture coming into Turn 8.
“That’s why I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go straight in Turn 8, so I braked early, but then it actually kind of recovered and it was fine. So, I’m not sure if it was something on the tyre or if something was wrong with the car because of the contact.
“I haven’t heard anything yet about the corner weights but it felt really odd, so a very, very messy first lap.”
Rather than come back through the field as you’d expect given how dominant Mercedes have been, however, Bottas failed to make any ground at all, only passing Kimi Raikkonen after the red flag.
“I was suffering some overheating issues with the engine running in traffic, so there wasn’t much I could do,” he added.
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“Every time I got close to another car, I had to back off due to the overheating or look for clean air on the straights, which meant I couldn’t follow any cars, I couldn’t race them, so it felt long.
“It felt a bit better after the red flag and towards the end of the race, but there’s lots of things for us to review and understand.
“We’ll debrief and then move onto Mugello. We should have a good car there but it’s going to be tough to overtake, so qualifying will be crucial.”
His fifth place finish meant Valtteri only gained three points on Hamilton in the standings, this after the Briton recovered from 16th to seventh after his 10-second stop/go penalty which cost him a certain win.
