Bottas has difficulty with Mercedes' starting procedure

Valtteri Bottas had a poor start to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. In just a few laps he lost four places. He was even so slow that he thought he had a flat tyre. However, the drama started before his car even started to move.

"I had an issue with the actual reaction to the lights," the Finn tried to explain afterwards to Autosport.com. "We've been playing around with the way we do start practicing and the protocol of how we do it. We've changed that a bit, and I feel like there's been some disturbance sometimes at the actual starts."

Bottas says he can't go into more detail about the unusual way they do test starts, but he feels they're not representative of 'the kind of start' needed in the race.

Just like in Hungary

Bottas says that the problem he had now is similar to the incident in Hungary when he reacted too early to the lights. According to him, once the clutch is engaged and the car rolls away, there is nothing wrong, it is purely a matter of when he starts.

The fact that Mercedes has a different way of starting can also be seen from the onboard images in recent weeks when test starts are made during the free practice sessions. Last weekend, Hamilton put his left hand on top of the wheel and then performs an action behind the wheel.