Mercedes did not believe sensors on car Bottas, but cause for damage obvious

According to the Mercedes team, Valtteri Bottas drove with a damaged floor at Imola from the second lap of the race. At first it was difficult to find out what caused this, but after a pit stop it soon became clear.

Mercedes is driving this season with dark red accents in the livery of sponsor INEOS, but when the Mercedes mechanics quickly inspected Bottas' car, suddenly there was a part with a very bright red colour on it.

It is clear that this came from a Ferrari, probably the car of Sebastian Vettel, who came into contact with another driver on the first lap. Vettel himself seemed to suffer less from this than Bottas. At first the team could not believe how much downward pressure their driver had lost. Also because Bottas still had quite the pace.

"If you translate it into lap time it was seven or eight tenths per lap, but at first we couldn't believe it was that much. We weren’t really believing the sensors because we were looking at how Valtteri was not pushing particularly hard, able to do reasonable lap times, and when we needed him to he could build a bit of a gap", said Andrew Shovlin in the team review.