de9776ff7e895cb49ef9948fb9d5aa8fd9b1e2f5

Bottas: Toro Rosso had better pace than us at Monaco

18:59, 28 May 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

Valtteri Bottas believes that on the hypersoft tyres, Toro Rosso had better pace than Mercedes during the Monaco Grand Prix. Bottas went on to finish a lowly fifth after getting stuck behind Kimi Raikkonen as the top six all finished where they started.

Bottas was in the same boat as the rest of the top five in that there was no hope of overtaking due to the required tyre management to make the one-stop strategy work. That paired with the almost-impossible job of overtaking around the streets meant that it was a frustrating race for the Silver Arrows.

"It was impressive how long (a) stint they could do with the hyper, so for sure they were doing something better than us with that tyre," Bottas said about Pierre Gasly's remarkable 37-lap stint on the hypersofts.

"I think the weakness for us this weekend was the long run performance with the hyper and general lack of pace with the car."

Gasly however was surprised by the tyres performance and believed that the tyres wouldn't last the required stint length.

"Actually we did a much longer stint than what we had planned.

"We didn't expect that we would be able to keep the tyres alive that long.

"It wasn't the plan at all and it's something that we decided during the race. It was quite unbelievable how many laps we did with the hypersoft in the first stint.

"Before the race I wasn't confident at all with the tyres because the degradation was massive.

"So I tried to take really good care of the tyres at the beginning and when everyone pitted I started to push and we were just faster than all the guys who pitted to put the supersoft and ultrasoft on."