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Valtteri Bottas’s 2020 Formula 1 season couldn’t have got off to a much better start, as he won the Austrian Grand Prix from pole position and took a 13-point lead over Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton – who finished a penalised fourth.
But since then, Bottas’s season has not gone so well.
After six races, he is now a massive 43 points behind Hamilton, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen also six ahead of him.
As Bottas himself put it after finishing third in the Spanish Grand Prix, “apart from the first race, it’s been pretty bad”.
With F1 about to move into another intense triple-header swing that could either make the title outcome a foregone conclusion or revive the fight heading into what could be quite a short second ‘half’, here is how Bottas’s 13-point lead has turned into that 43-point deficit, with the points loss measured against Hamilton.
STYRIA – 7 POINTS LOST
This reversal was all about Hamilton’s stunning qualifying pace in the wet with a “close to perfect” pole lap, and Bottas down in fourth place and 1.428s slower.
With Hamilton in command, Bottas passed Carlos Sainz Jr for third early on then ran 10 laps longer than second-placed Verstappen before stopping.
This gave him a tyre advantage in the final stint and he recovered second with four laps remaining by passing the Red Bull.
Key issue: Failing to at least keep Hamilton in sight in wet qualifying. Strong race minimised the damage.
HUNGARY – 11 POINTS LOST
Bottas never looked Hamilton’s match in qualifying but dug deep to close to just 0.107s off on the final run of Q3.
But what really cost him was the start, moving fractionally before the lights (when distracted by his dashboard) but within tolerances then wheelspinning his way briefly as low as seventh place on the first lap.
That meant third in the race as Hamilton won again.
Key issue: That costly glance at the start wrecked his race.
BRITAIN – 25 POINTS LOST
Bottas had already been beaten resoundingly into second place both in qualifying and the race by Hamilton, with a seven-point loss already inevitable.
But on the 50th lap of the race, he suffered a front-left tyre failure when the belt in his Pirelli broke in the worst possible place on track. He had to do a full lap at crawling speed, rejoining outside of the points and finishing 11th.
Key issue: Tyre failure was out of Bottas’s control, but he was already heading for a defeat.
70th ANNIVERSARY – 4 POINTS LOST
This was a real missed opportunity for Bottas, who beat Hamilton to pole position by 0.063s.
But on a day when rear tyre blistering was a huge problem for Mercedes, Red Bull driver Verstappen was able to take the initiative and win.
Even then, Bottas ran ahead of Hamilton until their strategies diverged, with Hamilton running nine laps longer on his second stint then using a tyre advantage to pass Bottas for second and take a point for fastest lap.
Key issue: The long stint that allowed Hamilton to beat Bottas was only possible because of what Mercedes learned from Bottas’s tyres when they came off his car. In that sense, he paid for being the team’s leading car and having what appeared at that point to be the priority strategy.
SPAIN – 9 POINTS LOST
This wasn’t the biggest points swing against Bottas of the season, but it seemed to be the one that left him at his lowest ebb.
His reaction time off the line from second place on the grid wasn’t sharp enough and he slipped behind both Verstappen and Lance Stroll.
While he quickly dispatched Stroll for third, he couldn’t get ahead of Verstappen for the rest of the race and was left ruing taking softs, rather than mediums, for his third stint.
A bonus point for fastest lap after a late pitstop was little consolation.
Key issue: Multiple factors this time – slightly too slow in qualifying again, poor start, lacking the race pace to overcome Verstappen and not being to make the soft tyres work.
As Bottas has put it, his shot at the title is “drifting away”. After losing ground in the last five races, he needs to turn the tide in the upcoming triple header at Spa, Monza and Mugello to have any chance of reaching the promised land of the world championship.
