Bottas: "Even without problems Verstappen would have been very hard to beat"

Valtteri Bottas was initially running well in the Monaco Grand Prix, until a catastrophic tyre change threw a spanner in the works. In his own words, he's not too worried about it as he doesn't see how he could have beaten Max Verstappen.

Bottas is understandably disappointed with the result in Monaco, exposing a weakness of Mercedes. "The wheel nut that stuck shows a pattern of this season: the pit stops are not our strongest point," the Finn said in a conversation with AutoHebdo. "We can learn a lot from last weekend."

However, the Mercedes driver does not think he had a chance to beat Verstappen, had he not encountered problems. "Max Verstappen was very difficult to beat even without pit stop problems, but second place was definitely possible. I wasn't very lucky this weekend," he continues.

He does, however, indicate that he is happy with the battle between his team and that of Red Bull Racing. "If we can beat them at the end of the season it means we have done better than them. The cars are more or less at the same level, so we have to get everything out of the team every weekend. In Monaco, Red Bull clearly did that better than us," Bottas said.

The Finn isn't too worried about the fact that he hasn't won a race yet in 2021. He's confident it'll come: "That victory will come."