Bottas delivered the 'maximum' with second place in Canada

40

Valtteri Bottas said there was nothing more that he or Mercedes could have done on Sunday to beat Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to the victory in today's Canadian Grand Prix.

"Since lap 1 really they seemed to be a bit quicker all the time," he said afterwards. "They could kind of control the race.

I think this was the maximum today. Yesterday there was about a hundredths of a second so maybe from pole it could have been different.

"But from P2 today I think we maxed out," he insisted. "I'm happy for that - but I'm not happy we were behind."

Bottas had to battle to hold on to that second place at the start, when Max Verstappen did everything he could to force his way past through the first two corners.

"I think the most exciting part was really the start," he agreed. "Just trying to defend my second place as hard as I could. I think it was really cool racing with Max there into turns 1 and 2.

"I'm happy I ended up ahead of him!

"After that, we were just trying to put pressure on Sebastian. We couldn't really, we didn't have enough pace."

Bottas kept pace with Vettel for much of the race, but lost touch toward the end. He came close to falling back into the clutches of the Red Bull.

"We were really pushing on it and we got a little into trouble at the end with running out of fuel," he explained.

Vettel wins in Canada to wipe out Hamilton's title lead

"I had to save a massive amount the last few laps, and that's why Max got so close."

Ultimately, Mercedes' fate this weekend may have been decided before the team even touched down in Montreal.

The team had been planning to use a new specification power unit at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. However word from Brackley was that engineers had found a quality issue that potentially affected the reliability of the new engines.

That meant a rethink. Bottas and his team mate Lewis Hamilton had to use the same units that had already completed six races, meaning they were down on power compared with their Ferrari and Renault rivals.

Asked if Bottas thought this had made a big difference on Sunday, he was in no doubt that it had.

"We need [the upgrade], definitely," he said. "Today showed we're not quick enough, so we definitely need it.

"And we're going to get it for the next race [in France] so that's good."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.