Bottas: My season turned to sh*t

Valtteri Bottas said his disappointing run to fifth at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix neatly summed up his entire 2018 season as it turned "to shit" after a promising start. Bottas ended the campaign fifth in the drivers' standings, without a win to his name all year, after another underwhelming outing in Yas Marina.

Bottas had entered the final race of the campaign with hopes of repeating last year's win from pole, but things turned sour in the second half of the race as car problems and errors helped Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo through after he had ran second.

The Finn saw likely wins in China and Baku snatched away by uncontrollable circumstances in the early stages of 2018 before he was ordered to give an apparent certain win in Russia to aid Lewis Hamilton's title bid.

After becoming just the third driver in the 21st Century to go winless across a season in a championship-winning car, Bottas was in an understandably low mood.

"Overall the race sums up the season quite well - started off quite well and then everything turns to shit," Bottas said.

"I initially had a lock-up into turn five when Sebastian got close, and then he got DRS and overtook me.

"I thought it was purely my mistake, which in the end it was, but the wind suddenly turned around, so I would've had to brake a bit earlier for the wind - fair enough.

"At the same time, the team found some vibration on the rear right brake and some issue, so sometimes the front brakes had to work harder than the rear brakes to compensate and that meant there were sudden lock-ups.

"[The] same thing happened when I went straight [at turn eight] and Verstappen got close, so we still need to investigate what was exactly the issue with the brakes."

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