Mercedes know what the problem is: 'Bottas lacked that confidence'

Valtteri Bottas looked completely lost during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Finn qualified in tenth place and fell in the race outside the points. According to Mike Elliott, Technology Director of Mercedes, Valtteri lacked confidence.

After the GP in Baku Bottas indicated that he was looking for answers. The Finn often has a weekend in which he does not have the pace of Lewis Hamilton, but this was the worst. Bottas didn't even manage to score any points with the Mercedes W12, which is remarkable.

Bottas can't find his rhythm

''I think at this circuit one of the difficulties is getting the warm-up of the front tyre and it is also a circuit wherei in you need to have real confidence, the walls are really close and if you get it wrong you are going to put it into the wall. Those two things kind of go together because if you can go a little bit quicker, if you can get yourself a little bit closer to the wall because you are confident, then you get a bit more heat into the tyres. If you get more heat into the tyres you get a bit more grip and you can go faster and so you end up with this sort of positive spiral,'' Elliott said in the Mercedes Debrief.

''If I look at the weekend I think Lewis found a little step in FP3 with setup and that seemed to help him find a little bit more from the car and all of a sudden we went from struggling a bit to being really in the front runners on the pace and Lewis took that all the way through qualifying. I think Valtteri just didn’t get to that position. He didn’t find that, sort of, last little bit of confidence to be in that positive spiral in the same way," concluded Mercedes' top man.