Mercedes: "This was our only chance to take second place from Verstappen"

Toto Wolff has no regrets that Mercedes has chosen to stop Valtteri Bottas one extra time in the hope of passing Max Verstappen by the end of the race. According to the Austrian team boss, Bottas wouldn't have been second either if he had stayed outside.

"No, that would have been wrong," Wolff is quoted by Autosport.com. Why wasn't that an option for Mercedes on Sunday afternoon? "Because Valtteri's tyre started to grain on the left-front quite heavily because he was pushing so hard."

Bottas had to make an extra pit stop anyway

The 48-year-old chief suspects that his Finnish driver would not have made it to the finish flag without an extra pit stop. "We think he would have run out of tyre anyway, and putting him onto a new hard, in a similar way like last year with Lewis Hamilton, was actually the only chance of trying to snatch P2."

Bottas was still within the DRS distance of the Dutch Red Bull Racing driver on lap 70, but there was no real attack. "At the end it wasn't sufficient. There was quite a lot of traffic in-between that we didn't clear fast enough, and I think it was a recovery drive", refers to the poor start of Bottas.