Mercedes confirms: irreparable damage to W12 Bottas after Imola crash

Following his contact with George Russell and the subsequent heavy crash at the Imola circuit, large parts of Valtteri Bottas' W12 may be written off, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed.

In their usual debrief after the Grand Prix, Shovlin explained how the team has tried to repair Bottas' car, and what the damage is. “Unfortunately, the car has not done quite so well", Shovlin begins. "There is a fair amount of damage."

The Brit continued, acknowledging that his driver's car could probably not be repaired in its entirety. "We have managed to bring a lot of it back to the UK, we got the power unit at Brixworth where that’s being checked and inspected carefully and we will just pick through this and some of the bits we might be able to salvage," Shovlin said.

The trackside director foresees a race against time for his team, in order to get the necessary parts fully functional and in Portugal before the start of the next Grand Prix weekend.

Shovlin: "Unfortunately, quite a lot of it is damaged beyond repair and we are just looking at a logistics plan to try and be able to get sufficient parts to Portimão, which is the week after next, to make sure we can run both cars in the correct spec."