Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Silverstone, 2020

Bottas says tyre failure happened so sudden he couldn’t predict it

2020 British Grand Prix

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Valtteri Bottas said he had no way of knowing his tyre was about to fail in the closing laps of the British Grand Prix.

The Mercedes driver was running second when he suffered a puncture as he was passing the pit lane entrance. He had to complete an entire lap on the puncture tyre, which dropped him out of the points. He finished 11th.

“Of course [it’s] really disappointing and very unlucky,” he said after the race. “I was aware I got a puncture so I had to go around the whole lap. So not ideal.”

Two Safety Car periods early in the race meant Bottas, Lewis Hamilton and their rivals switched to hard tyres earlier than they would normally have done.

“We knew it was going to be a long stint with the hard tyre,” said Bottas. “Of course I was trying to put pressure on Lewis.

“But towards the end I was starting to get more and more vibration. I reported that and then at the end I had in my mind that who knows, there could be an issue. So of course I started to manage a bit.

“But it just happened like this, so sudden, I couldn’t really predict it happening. Not much more to say really.”

Formula 1’s official tyre supplier Pirelli has chosen to bring softer tyres for next weekend’s race, when conditions are also expected to be hotter.

“It’s going to be an issue for everyone,” said Bottas. “For sure one stop is not going to happen with the compounds we have next week.

“So I’m sure there still will be lots of things learned from this weekend. But just need to move on, I guess.”

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Keith Collantine
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24 comments on “Bottas says tyre failure happened so sudden he couldn’t predict it”

  1. Hope F1 genius minds ditch this wild plan for softer tyres next week.

  2. So his complaints of visibility were not a sign tyres were gone? also pitting him would have meant losing 1 place to Max vs out of top 10 due failure.

    1. If he had, Hamilton would have lost out to him and then his fans would be at Mercs throat.

    2. Tyre vibrations & visibility issues that can cause when bad are not necessarily signs that a tyre is about to fail though.

      There have been many races in the past where the Pirelli’s have blistered far worse than they did today without getting near the risk of failure. I remember Monza 2 years ago for instance where virtually everyone had big blisters & bad vibrations.

      Even going back to 2005 when Raikkonen had that massive flat spot at the Nurburgring & was suffering a lot of vibrations the tyre never actually failed, It ended up causing the suspension to fail but the tyre was still fully inflated.

      1. Somehow Silverstone and Pirelli have a bad relation with regards to tyres failing. Remember 2017 Silverstone GP and couple of years before with Alonso dodging punctured tyres.

      2. Yeah, but that was the true rubber made by Michelin, reflecting on Nürburgring 2015. This kind of tyre failure is unacceptable. The carcass collapsed although the wear wasn’t an issue at all. This is a flaw in design at best! The tyre not suitable to withstand lateral forces of F1 car.

  3. Only matters if he loses the championship by less than 25 points.

  4. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    2nd August 2020, 16:38

    This was unfortunate for Bottas as he seemed to have very similar pace to hamilton this time out, and Given he was behind Hamilton and hamilton had clean air, I think he managed to tyres as good as Hamilton while still having decent pace. It isn’t often the case that Bottas is this close to hamilton. Such a shame that this tyre was a terrible and strategy for everyone and it makes his result look worse than his performance actually was. Pace wise, this weekend, I would say it is the closest he’s been to Hamilton out of any races so far. But he gets a puncture and no points. May remind him of baku 2018 – 4th race of the season and a puncture resulting in no points.
    I’m not expecting him to beat hamilton this season, but every season, he seems to have worse luck than hamilton which won’t help.

    1. @thegianthogweed

      This is a just result for the season so far 3 poles 3 wins, he deserves this gap, last year Bottas was unlucky in Silverstone but Hamilton lap after lap was like 6 tenths behind in dirty air. Bottas could not get under a second. Im sorry but that shows a pace advantage like Gasly today often 5 tenths behind Vet it showed he was quicker. Look at the last 10 laps Lewis stamped his authority he had it in the bag. Did you see Hungary last race i can say with 90% certainty Lewis passes Max or makes and attempt unlike Bottas. He really was not close today atall, Lewis was managing the race. And Bottas was losing loads at the end which is nothing new. Remember when people said Ham was bad on tyres a decade ago lol, it was hilariously wrong.

    2. To be fair Lewis was doing what every driver does when they lead a race in the current F1….he was managing his tires and car, and maintaining a gap. It’s not as if Lewis was trying to stretch the gap…he had Bottas covered. It is also likely that Mercedes as a team decided to turn the performance in their engines down, as those Mercs were so much faster than any other car….the gap from Verstappen to Bottas was stable and not growing, even though the Mercs could have gone more than a second a lap quicker than the Red Bull if they desired. If Bottas and Mercedes were really pushing, you would expect Verstappen to be miles behind, as he has been at times in previous races. A large part of that strategy was dictated by the early safety cars, and Mercedes having to go on those hard tires far longer than they would have wanted to.

      So in all, I would say your assessment of Bottas having similar pace is probably due more to team strategy, than any real race pace from Bottas.

    3. Bottas wasn’t actually close to Hamilton this race, though it may seem so. He confirmed he was pushing most of the race, whilst Lewis confirmed he wasn’t pushing. In that respect, he managed his tyres far worse than Lewis did.

      However, this is more of an indictment of Pirelli, rather than how any driver drove.

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        3rd August 2020, 8:36

        @kbdavies
        The things Hamilton says to different media varies so much in that case. This is from Channel 4 in the UK:

        “Valterri was really at the beginning of that stint was pushing so hard and it was not easy to keep him behind. So I had to lean on the trye more than I normally would have hoped.

        Today was not easy to stay ahead of him. There was no point where i was chilling and I was just managing the pace. You know, I think you could see, some laps he would go quicker than I had to respond then another lap, he would be a little bit further off and I could back off a little bit further off and I could back off a little bit and try and save the tyres. But I couldn’t make one mistake. I couldn’t lock up anywhere or he would have been in my DRS as he was only a second or 2 seconds away.”

        Bottas may have been pushing a bit more than Hamilton, but he certainly did make Hamilton work for it, I don’t think there is any denying that. So I don’t think I agree that Bottas wasn’t close to hamilton pace wise.

        Hamilton then said he noticed Bottas started to fall off. But this was quite a few laps after Bottas first noted the vibration which he noted on the radio didn’t effect his pace. Bottas then said after the race that he dropped back as he was trying to manage them to avoid them getting worse. I know you are agreeing the problem is with the tyres and not Bottas, but Hamilton sometimes seems to have a varied list of automatic messages that he says to different media that seem totally different.

  5. On dutch tv Bottas was saying Lewis was lucky AGAIN

    Maybe he’ll stick his car in a gap next time in turn 1

    1. @anunaki Unlucky Bottas you will never be on Lewis level, you may win title due to covid god forbid but not because you are better. Maybe nurse tyres better unlike Lewis whose went with 30 seconds of the race left lol. You could tell Bot took alot of life out of tyres he was way behind losing loads of time. You got a link to that please

    2. Doing a “rosberg” would be nice for the championship.

    3. Luck favors the brave ones.

    4. My boy Bottas following Rosberg’s footsteps. Inside line at Abbey is not great. Outside line is better at the corner due to the trajectory. I think Mercedes need to take some responsibility here. Toto said that they already saw that Bottas and Hamilton were pushing harder than they would like to. If you were Mercedes, you would have told both drivers to conserve tyres because they already knew that the hard tyre durability for that stint was already on the limit. That cost them another 1-2. They had 10 seconds over Verstappen and I believe that if they managed it better, they could have finished 1-2.

      As for Bottas, vibration is already a sign that the tyre is not in great shape. We will wait to see what data Pirelli provides to us regarding the punctures. However, if Pirelli finds out that the cause was over stressing the tyre, I cannot blame anyone other than him or the team for the result. I get it Bottas wants to win. However, I did not believe that he was going to beat Hamilton in the race considering how Hamilton consistently responded to the laptimes.

      With Bottas acting this way, I wonder if he feels his seat is under threat. I mean… anything can happen in terms of the driver market right?

      1. If they continue this dominance at the next few tracks you could argue that now is the time to put Russell in the car for 21. Give him a year of learning his trade up the front with no major threat to him from the teams behind. As for the driver market Ted saying in his round up that Vettel to RP is common knowledge up and down the pit lane.

        1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
          3rd August 2020, 0:17

          Not sure why some are thinking mercedes are looking to replace bottas next year. It is looking extremely likely that he is remaining.

          https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/150556/bottas-to-stay-at-mercedes-with-new-2021-f1-deal

    5. I don’t blame him for the start. But the way he meekly gave up the last point to Vettel was a shame. It’s the last lap and the last point and he let Vettel just drive him off the track at Stowe.

  6. I have a theory that this happened exactly because Valtteri, then Lewis and Carlos slowed down.

    Had they driven at the same pace, keeping the same pressure in tyres – everything would have been fine.
    But they slowed, pressure dropped – and tyres delaminated.

    Max could have ended up the same, had he stayed on hards and slowed when these happened to both Mercedes cars.

    1. It is still a poor tyre from Pirelli

  7. I think the tyre of the two merc cars failed because BOT pushed too much. He literally pushed for nearly the whole race. Lewis was trying to save but BOT actually thought he had the measure of Lewis today, so he just kept pushing. So what we saw in the race was BOT would get within a second of Lewis, then Lewis would be forced to respond and extend the gap again out of DRS range thereby, using up the tyres more. So this is really what happened today. It wasn’t a case of BOT having the same pace as Lewis. If BOT had been more strategic with his attacks, I don’t think we would have seen those tyre failures.

  8. I’ve not known many drivers who could predict exactly when a tyre would fail.
    It will always take the driver by surprise.

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