Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff was a disappointed man after seeing Valtteri Bottas come up just short in his attempt to overhaul Sebastian Vettel at the end of the Bahrain GP.
Forced onto a one-stop strategy by Kimi Raikkonen’s pit-stop incident, the Finn was closing in on the German by over a second per lap in the final 10 laps of Sunday’s race but, ultimately, couldn’t quite get close enough coming out of the final corner to use DRS to make a pass.
The eventual margin of victory was 0.699s in the Ferrari driver’s favour with the Austrian admitting, in hindsight, Mercedes got it slightly wrong.
“Were we pushing hard enough with Valtteri in the middle? I don’t know, maybe not,” he told Sky Sports. “We didn’t know how long the medium would last and I think, with second and third, we have to be happy after yesterday.
A decision to switch to the Medium tyre and focus on a one-stop strategy was what the team thought had got the job done with Vettel and Ferrari committing to a two-stop before the problem for Raikkonen.
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Given the pace advantage which he had late on, Bottas admits failing to complete the job was tough to take.
“Being second with such a close margin and having good pace in the end is extremely disappointing,” he admitted.
“I need to still look at everything from the race – if there’s anything I could have done better, that we could have done better as a team.
“But anyway it’s a second. We need to learn from this and move on – it’s still 19 races to go!”
Asked if he thought one more lap would have been enough he added: “I don’t want to say ‘if and if’,” you know,” he told Sky Sports.
“The race is 57 laps and Sebastian got to the flag the quickest, so they won.”
