Bottas demands Mercedes explanation after being left "a sitting duck" in Baku

Valtteri Bottas has conceded to feeling "like a sitting duck" as he dropped through the F1 field in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Starting from 10th after struggling to switch on the tyres on his Mercedes during qualifying, Bottas went on to finish 12th despite Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen dropping out.

The Finn was left baffled by the performance of his W12 during the race and why he was so far off the pace despite driving at his limit around the Baku streets.

“It was actually a quite similar feeling to qualifying and most of Friday, that really the main issue was lack of pace and just not being quick enough," said Bottas.

“Quite early on in the race I could see that I just couldn’t match the cars ahead, especially when one of the Aston Martins was ahead of me I just couldn’t keep up. I’m confused. It’s really weird.

“I can’t remember this kind of weekend. There have been weekends where I’ve had bad sessions but always at some point I’ve had the pace. But this weekend it’s been all of the time there and I haven’t understood what’s wrong.

“I know how to be fast here, but I can’t go faster, so honestly I have no idea. I felt like a sitting duck, there were cars coming left and right and I couldn’t do anything.”

Bottas calls for pace investigation

Mercedes struggled for pace in Friday’s running and despite a late night for the engineers spent delving into the data both cars were still off the pace in Saturday morning practice.

Hamilton managed to turn around his situation for qualifying but Bottas remained in the dark and has called for a full investigation into the problems before the next race in France.

“I know myself when there’s the limit and I can’t go faster, and then you’re still six, seven, eight tenths behind,” he said. “It’s not normal. [It’s] something we need to understand before going to France.

“[It] would be the most logical reason, we might find something in the car, but if not it must be the tyres, but you know we’re running the same tyre pressures, same temperatures, we need to find out. At the moment I don’t know.

“This was definitely for me at least more of a struggle than I thought, I thought it should be better than Monaco but obviously it was far away from that.

“France, of course, is really different - long, high-speed corners, and I think tyre warm-up should be a bit easier in the next race at least and then we’ll see. Lots to learn from this weekend, but also lots to forget.“

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