Ricciardo "ruined my day" with turn one contact - Bottas

Valtteri Bottas has blamed Daniel Ricciardo for 'ruining his day' with the contact that resulted in a first-corner spin at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

The Finn, who left the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez pointless despite taking a stunning pole position for Mercedes, was clipped by Ricciardo at turn one after the McLaren driver had locked up under braking on the approach.

Bottas' day got worse as he then found himself stuck behind the Australian for the bulk of the race and suffered a 12-second stop before finishing two laps down in 15th.

That was as a result of two late stops for the fastest lap attempt to steal a point away from the race winner in Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

On the incident with Ricciardo, Bottas said: "He really ruined my day but I am sure he didn't do the hit on purpose. It compromised his race as well but it was not ideal.

"Since the spin in turn one with the hit from Daniel, we were really compromised and the best chance we had to get by was stopping twice."

The issues experienced by both drivers were also found by almost every other driver on the grid, with the task of following and overtaking rivals almost impossible with the thin air at altitude placing added strain on brake and engine cooling.

"Following other cars with the engine and brakes overheating it was just more difficult than we thought," explained Bottas.

"It was as hard as we expected, as it was back in 2019. The big thing here is to not overheat the engine or the brakes so you cannot push. We did a lot of lift and coast."

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