Bottas' Struggles with Cooling Hurt Race

He started 15th on the grid after a crash in qualifying and gearbox change but could only manage 8th on Sunday.

Valtteri Bottas' recovery drive on Sunday was hampered, he believes, by a cooling issue, hurting what was already had a weekend to forget in Melbourne. After a heavy crash and subsequent gearbox change from Saturday left him 15th, he already had a mountain to climb to recover the weekend.

His efforts weren't helped by an apparent cooling miscalculation by Mercedes which left him struggling to pass less powerful cars such as the Renault powered teams. Dirty air from the cars in front disturbed the Mercedes seemingly more than any other car and more issues this season might be apparent. Overheating issues with the engine prevented the Finn from challenging the cars around him.

"We expected it was going to be difficult, and we knew that you need a big pace difference delta to overtake if the other guy doesn't do any mistake, and especially if there's a train of cars like I had in the whole second stint," Bottas explained.

"There was not a lot of things happening that were really helping me.

"I think with the VSC maybe I gained a little bit, stopping under that, but other than that it was a pretty frustrating race in the end because we do have a good car but there was nothing I could do.

"On top of that what was really limiting us today was overheating.

"I think there was something wrong with the calculation for the cooling we estimated for today so I couldn't really be close to other cars and couldn't put pressure on other cars for long.

"I could only do about two laps and then I had to back off and try again."

"The engine difference is not massive anymore,"

"We still have a bit of an advantage over Renault, but it's not massive and those cars are not too bad in the corners. I couldn't get any closer really.

"All the teams are closer so that makes it difficult."