Valtteri Bottas had “no idea” that he had hit the carbon fibre debris which punctured his tyre while leading the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and ultimately led to retirement.
Mercedes had engineered Bottas into a race winning position, leaving him out longer than his rivals on the supersoft tyres.
As the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo collided which brought out the safety car, Bottas pitted from the lead for his first stop. However, so did the drivers behind him to take on fresher ultrasoft tyres with just a handful of laps remaining.
A failed attempt to overtake removed early leader Sebastian Vettel from race-winning contention at the restart. Bottas was then on course for victory until he ran over debris near the pitlane entry, which gave him an instant puncture on the right-rear. He was forced to retire as a result.
Although disappointed, Bottas confirmed after the race he couldn’t see the debris; “I had no idea at any point that I ran over any debris, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t feel anything, so I was just very, very unlucky.
“I think this track is difficult, street circuits in general with a lot of crashes will always be an issue.
“It felt like a good race to then, safety car restart everything was under control. I could pull a bit of a gap, then this happened. I just had no idea that I run over some debris, can’t say much more.”
His puncture handed the win to his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who now heads the driver’s championship by four points from Vettel in second.
