Valtteri Bottas (Photo : Getty Images)
Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland apologized to his team for a "stupid mistake" in warming up his tires that caused him to lose control of his car and spin behind the safety car during the Chinese Grand Prix.
The field was preparing for a restart when the mistake occurred, causing Bottas to spin onto the grass and drop from fifth place to 12th in the race before recovering to finish sixth.
Bottas narrated that he "was going quite slow" while trying to put heat into the tires by going left and right and accelerating at the same time.
When he got into "a bit of a slide," Bottas overcorrected the situation that caused him to spin onto the grass.
To make matters worse, Bottas was slow to get the car out of the grass.
However, the team lost "too many points."
Bottas's teammate Lewis Hamilton won the race.
The Finn is in his first season with a top team after being signed by Mercedes on a one-year contract this year after world champion Nico Rosberg retired.
Bottas said he was glad he only had to wait for a week and not the usual two until the next Formula One race, which will be in Bahrain. He said that the main thing is to stop thinking about the incident and not to do the same silly mistake again.
Bottas feels that "the pace is there" and that since he can do very good things with the car, he just has to keep going and good results will come.
He added that the Mercedes team needs to do a stronger job in pacing the cars than what they have done during the Australian Grand Prix.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said there are 18 races to go and Bottas needs to put the incident behind him and forget about it.
