Valtteri Bottas says his seventh-placed finish in Sunday’s French Grand Prix more or less “sums up” his luckless 2018 season.
The Finn, who started on the front row, suffered a left-rear puncture on the first-lap following contact with Sebastian Vettel at the first corner, with the Ferrari driver ploughing into Bottas after locking his brakes into Turn 1.
Bottas was forced to complete a whole lap with a flat tyre and revealed the incident caused damage to the floor of his Mercedes, which crucially lost him performance as he fought his way through the field to collect six world championship points.
“That was a shame because we had a strong car today as Lewis’ result shows,” said Bottas.
“But my race was lost in Turn 1. I was on the outside going into it and I knew that keeping that line would put me on the inside for Turn 2.
“Then suddenly I got a hit from behind, had a puncture and damaged my floor. After that it was difficult as the car was quite damaged and I could feel the lack of rear end.
“I was sliding around and had to do a second pitstop which was unfortunately slow so we lost more time there.”
Bottas has endured a run of bad luck this season that has cost him victory on more than one occasion, but the 28-year-old admitted there was a lot of positives to take from the weekend.
“I guess today was just not my day,” he added. “In a way it sums up my season so far. But there are some positives – we were strong as a team, although unfortunately we could not turn that into a perfect points result.
“I also set the fastest lap of the race despite the condition of the car. I’ll keep my head down, work hard and hopefully the luck will turn around at some point – I think it’s about time.”
