Valtteri Bottas will take a five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix it has been confirmed after changing his gearbox before the end of the obligatory six-race period.
The drop offers an opportunity for Ferrari to try and take advantage and close the gap on Mercedes and clears one potential hurdle for Sebastian Vettel in his attempt to beat Lewis Hamilton and revive his title aspirations.
It also comes as Bottas has seen a largely positive first season with the Brackley-based team falter in recent races as he has failed to get within half a second of teammate Hamilton in qualifying since the summer break and was nearly nine-tenths off the pace in Practice 1 on Friday at Suzuka.
“The car did feel better than it did in Malaysia, but we still need to work on things to make the car quicker,” the Finn commented after the day was over. “As a starting point for the weekend, it definitely feels better than a week ago. My run with the Soft tyres was good, but with the SuperSoft, I didn’t really gain any grip. So the main thing for me is to understand the SuperSoft performance.
“The long runs actually weren’t too bad, and hopefully, we’ll see better weather tomorrow.”
The Mercedes bosses are continuing to back the 28-year-old despite his recent troubles, however, with non-Executive Chairman Niki Lauda claiming it is up to the team to solve the issues.
“The alarm bells are ringing loudly,” the triple world champion told Germany’s Kronen Zeitung. “There is something wrong aerodynamically or mechanically. The car is not stable. So when you are over one second behind, you don’t even need to think about the tyre window.”
It is believed the issues are similar on both cars with the Austrian legend putting Hamilton’s ability to overcome them better down to his “talent” after he won in Singapore and finished second in Malaysia.
“Bottas, on the other hand, needs a stable car,” Lauda added. “We could not give him that. This is our fault.”
