Valtteri Bottas

He then...

You know, Rosberg left, brought in Bottas, and they had a very good team structure.

They were constantly winning the constructors, and he had a very comfortable world champion that was constantly delivering there as well.

But if George Russell is at a point where all of a sudden Mercedes are not able to comfortably win that constructors because he is finishing too far off, then I firmly believe he will be looking at the drawing board and he will be saying, who do we bring in, guys? Hmm.

It's weird, right? So they put out a VSC.

They're trying to push the Cadillac back.

I think it was Bottas who retired.

They tried to push it back and then they decided to bring out the tractor, forklift, whatever it's called, picked it up.

As far as the retirements that I mentioned, Oliver Bierman, he was one of the retirements.

Botas, who was driving for Cadillac, now he retired after 48 laps, so he could have made it to the end.

It's very unfortunate.

Uh, another person that did not make it was Franco Calapinto.

Okay.

Um, now Botas retirement out of the three, I mentioned to you guys, that was actually strategically really important because that triggered, as I told you guys, that happened really towards the end.

So, that actually triggered a virtual safety car, okay? And, you know, that really kind of bunched up the field again, okay? So that did have some implications in the race, excuse me.

Now, let's go back to the bigger picture, guys, with Antonelli securing this victory.

was and all three of them sort of met at the same time and were like oh ok this is going to be quite a feisty little battle and it was a short one but it was a fun little fight you know Max deciding that the best form of defence was offence as they say and instead of defending from charles just went well sorry i might as well send it up the inside of lando and he made it work um so that that was a fun little deal but but charles had too much pace for the both of them he made it work got himself into second place and then we were looking at lewis what could he do he was a little bit further back he'd been compromised earlier in the race um he was saying he had balance issues uh on his car um that red bull ferrari i should say Didn't get the balance quite right on his car, but they tweaked things throughout the race and things got better in the finalists, didn't they? He was showing really, really good pace.

Got himself up to fourth, was hunting down Max and then Valtteri Bottas pulls over at the side of the track with four laps to go.

Virtual safety car comes out.

Everyone's got to stick to the same delta time.

I agree fully.

Look at Valtteri Bottas, the slowest car on the grid.

And yet, he will be replaced, seemingly, by Korten Herta.

That's the news.

And I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of interesting.

But then Bottas went and scuppered them from that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there was a couple of retirements, wasn't there? There was...

Behrman and Colapinto.

Oh, and Bottas, but, you know, so two retirements.

I mean, Behrman had...

And I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of interesting.

But then Bottas went and scuppered them from that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there was a couple of retirements, wasn't there? There was...

Behrman and Colapinto.

Oh, and Bottas, but, you know, so two retirements.

I mean, Behrman had...

At least Williams are finishing 17th and 18th, which is not something could be said for the caddies.

Those two Williams cars, they were not 19th in a DNF because Cadillac's home race ended with Perez last among the finishers and Bottas parked up with a suspected power unit problem.

At least it wasn't the brakes this time.

And the vultures are circling around him regarding next year, too.

That being said, when times were good, he and Checo felt like they were closer to the opposition, but...

they were ultimately losers again.

Their biggest influence came through Bottas' retirement, triggering the late virtual safety car, so it's almost like Bottas has taken up the mantle from Stroll in trying to influence things further up the field, because the Cadillac, the car itself, really can't do that in terms of pace.

Because this time around, it was stopping the Hamilton pursuit of Verstappen for P3, something of which nobody asked for and, well, nobody wanted.

I guess you can say that's a good thing for Cadillac.

Valtteri retired.

Franco retired.

Oli retired.

So the car did have some pace in it.

And yeah, I guess there was also the late safety car, a virtual safety car for Valtteri's Bottas that parked up on lap 52.

I

was worried that was going to be a mess because they kind of mucked around trying to get that car out.