Valtteri Bottas admits to being surprised by Toto Wolff's claim that part of the issue with the Finn's wheel nut in Monaco was his failure to stop correctly at his pit slot.

The Austrian made the claim in the wake of a disastrous weekend on the streets of the Principality which saw Bottas score his second DNF of the season and teammate, Lewis Hamilton lose the championship lead after finishing a distant seventh.

Asked about Wolff's claim, Bottas, who participated today's press conference via video after his flight from Finland was delayed, admitted: "I was surprised.

"I saw the video," he continued, "and for me, it was pretty spot on where I stopped, so yeah, I was quite surprised.

"As a matter of fact, pit stops were one of my concerns already a few weeks before that I'd raised to the team," he revealed, "so it didn't come from somewhere out of the blue. We knew that we were not perfect in pit stops, as we've seen, and also other areas like tyre warm-up in qualifying.

"I think I was, like, 2-3 cm off the central line," he added, "and if you get that accuracy, normally it's pretty good. It can easily swing by 10-15 cm, so I thought it was pretty spot-on."

The Monaco retirement, coupled with his crash at Imola, would appear to have put the Finn's new found mental strength to the challenge, an aspect of Bottas' pre-season preparations he particularly focussed on this year.

"In the beginning of the season, definitely the mental strength has been tested," he laughed. "It's not been the easiest ride to start with, in the last few races, having two DNFs.

"So I would say there have been setbacks and it's all about how you bounce back from those and how you move forward.

"The loser option is to give up and it's not something I'm going to do," he insisted. "So still keeping very strong mentally and knowing that it's a long, long season ahead and for sure many good battles to come and hopefully many wins.

"So I have full belief in myself and for us as a team that we still have time to do good things."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by aroutis, 04/06/2021 5:30

"Basically that was utterly pathetic off Wolff. EVEN if Bottas had somehow done what Wolff says he did (which btw he did not), it's the responsibility of the people at the pits to compensate. But the thing is that if anyone watches the replay, it's clear this is not the case. So one has to wonder; Why is Wolff doing this?"

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2. Posted by kenji, 04/06/2021 1:42

"Despite all the shortcomings attributed to Bottas...lying isn't, I believe, one of them. Wolff is dumping on Bottas in a desperate attempt to deflect any criticism of the teams efforts. Even if Bottas was a couple of centimetres either side of his marks there should be an inbuilt tolerance for the gun application, as to be so precise is ridiculous no matter how good any of the drivers are. "

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Bottas surprised by Wolff's Monaco pit stop claim

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