Mercedes, who had won the previous eight Constructors' Championships, is now scraping for whatever points they can.
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Valtteri Bottas acknowledged that watching his former team Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton struggling in the early stages of the 2022 season has been “weird.” Mercedes, who had won the previous eight Constructors’ Championships, is now scraping for whatever points they can, with Hamilton finishing 10th in Saudi Arabia. Their performance has been the polar opposite of Alfa Romeo and Bottas, who have been among the season’s biggest surprises. At the Bahrain Grand Prix, Bottas outqualified his Mercedes replacement, George Russell, and looked on track to beat Hamilton in Saudi Arabia before his DNF.
“It’s weird to see,” he said following Hamilton’s elimination in Q1 as per Planet F1. “I would guess he had some kind of issue, I don’t know. It is surprising to see them struggling, but it’s also nice to be able to battle with them.”
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“I think this was kind of the best-case scenario for our first season together that I could ever imagine, with the information I had,” the Finn added.
Bottas appeared to be on track to make it two points-scoring races in a row until he was forced to retire the car in Jeddah due to a rising engine temperature. He said his late DNF was just how racing was after challenging for P6, including a battle with Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
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“It’s a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least,” the former Mercedes man said. “The engine temperatures kept rising. We need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn’t want to lose the engine.”
“It’s how racing goes. We now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on. Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles. Now let’s make sure we get back to scoring in Australia,” Bottas added.
