‘RACE THREE’ BOTTAS BLOWS HIS FINAL START CHANCE
After another long delay, the remaining 12 cars left the pitlane to again reform on the grid and take a third standing start of the day. This time, both Mercedes reacted perfectly well enough, but
Bottas bogged down as he left the line and he was jumped by Ricciardo, who wisely took the outside line at San Donato to offer Bottas no chance of an immediate fightback.
Nevertheless, the Mercedes was back ahead at that spot on the following lap, with Ricciardo forced to brake earlier into the long right-hander and Bottas making full use of the W11’s healthy downforce advantage to steam back into second around the outside.
The third chapter boiled down to a 13-lap dash to the flag, which Hamilton edged. He kept Bottas just over a second behind, out of DRS range, until unleashing the fastest lap on the penultimate tour to push the gap to 2s. Bottas then had a slow final lap, resulting in a winning margin of 4.880s.
The real action came from Albon behind, who finally made a brave around-the-outside-pass-with-a-podium-on-the-line move stick, as he thwarted Ricciardo’s brilliant bid for his first Renault top-three finish on lap 51. Albon was urged to chase Bottas, but the Mercedes was basically toying with the Red Bull, as Bottas dropped back in an ultimately vain attempt to wrest the fastest lap from Hamilton.
WAS BOTTAS DESTINED TO LOSE?
If the race had run cleanly to the flag (a tall order given Mugello’s fearsome bite and the likelihood of the gravel trapping cars) and the first safety car restart nonsense had not occurred, would Bottas have won?
As there was such little strategy in play last Sunday, we must assume that Bottas more than likely would still have been the loser given how much time he lost before his green-flag stop.
Hamilton had so much pace in hand – he gained 3.115s over laps 29 and 30 – that a pass seems probable.
At the same time, we must give Bottas some benefit of the doubt because, as he pointed out:“when you are behind, you need to slide the car more and that uses up your tyre.”but here we must also acknowledge that Hamilton has historically had superiority in terms of tyre management – it is a weakness that Bottas seems unable to solve. Bottas did edge back in the laps before Stroll’s crash, but he wasn’t exactly homing in on his team-mate. Plus, Hamilton had the edge on pure speed on race day.
Whatever the case, this was the second weekend in a row where Hamilton made a mistake and Bottas did not capitalise.“i don’t really remember all the phases, but it seemed there were no opportunities once I lost position at the second start, but that’s how it goes,”said Bottas in parc ferme.
The last word must go to the victor, who, with 90 F1 wins, is just one behind Michael Schumacher’s all-time record:“valtteri was so quick all weekend so keeping him behind in the starts and stops we had, I wouldn’t say it was easy to stay in the zone,” Hamilton reflected in the post-race press conference.
“It just doesn’t seem real [reaching 90 wins]. I never thought that I would be here, that’s for sure.”