Bottas: "It was my chance to master the restart"

Valtteri Bottas took his eighth victory in his Formula 1 career on Sunday and looks back on a successful weekend. He seemed to take the victory quite easily, but behind the scenes things didn't go well at Mercedes.

"Winning an F1 race is never easy, but today was particularly challenging. There were so many things going on in the race and it would have been quite easy to make a small mistake and lose it all", says Bottas in a press release from Mercedes. Especially in the first stint he was chased by his team mate Lewis Hamilton.

"I guess it was my chance to really master the restarts here. When you're in the lead, you want things to be constant and trouble-free, but today felt more like dodging bullets, though things were never out of control", he continues.

"I could build a good margin in the first stint and look after the car and the tyres to make sure that we could stick to our planned strategy. In the second stint, there was more pressure, particularly after all the Safety Cars. We faced some reliability concerns during the race, which put quite a bit of pressure on us, but luckily we made it to the end with both cars", the Finn concluded.