Bottas thought Monaco GP win was on before “big mistake” at pitstop
Bottas was promoted to second place with polesitter Charles Leclerc unable to take the race start and the Finn looked to challenge Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the win.
But any hopes of a first victory for the Finn in 2021 were dashed with a disastrous pit stop at the end of Lap 30.
Mercedes was unable to get Bottas’ front-right tyre off his car due to a cross-threaded wheel nut and after a number of failed attempts to remove the wheel, the team was left with no option but to retire the car.
“I don't know what happened in the pitstop to be honest,” said Bottas. “I don't know yet if it was human error or a technical issue.
“But, in any case, we need to learn from it. It's a big mistake by us and it should not happen.”
It is the second time that Bottas has retired from a race in the opening five rounds of the season and the result means he has fallen behind McLaren’s Lando Norris to fourth place in the championship.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said it seems like Bottas is “cursed” and revealed that the team has no idea what caused the problem, adding the tyre is still attached to the car.
“We need to look whether it’s a design issue or if we had a catastrophic failure of a few systems,” said Wolff.
“We just machined the whole nut off, I’ve never seen anything like this, there was no part there anymore.
“The tyre is still on the car, Ferrari is going to help us out with some heavy equipment, a big hammer or saw. It’s never happened to us before.”
“Very frustrating for him, because it seems he’s cursed. Valtteri said he saw the aluminium bits fly off in the front.”
Without the botched pit stop, Bottas is convinced he had the pace to challenge for the win despite dropping five seconds behind Verstappen at the time he stopped.
“I think otherwise we could have fought for the win,” he explained.
“Red Bull and Max, they were really quick, so it would have been difficult, but at least we could have gotten a second place today with good points but we lost them.
“Max was quick and I think they managed to get the soft tyre to last a bit longer in the first stint and once you get onto the hard tyre there's not much happening.
“I don't know. We'll never know if we could have challenged or not.”
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for Crash.net around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
