“It’s not the birthday present I wanted,” Valtteri Bottas receives a bitter and unwanted present for his birthday at Spa

“It’s not the birthday present I wanted,” Valtteri Bottas receives a bitter and unwanted present for his birthday at Spa

Valtteri Bottas, the Finnish driver who moved from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo this year turned 33 last Sunday during the Belgian Grand Prix at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, his celebrations were short lived with him retiring after completing a mere one and a half laps around the circuit.

The Finnish driver had a disastrous start to the weekend with him being unable to qualify for the Q2 session last Saturday and placing 20th on the grid. However, he was bumped up to 13th on the grid with several of the drivers on the grid taking penalties for exceeding the allowed number of engine component changes and Yuki Tsunoda being forced to start from the pit lane. His race on Sunday was short lived as Nicholas Latifi, the William’s driver was spat out of track and in an effort to avoid him, he clipped Latifi’s front wing sending him into a spin and leaving him in the gravel.

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With the Alex Albon scoring points for Williams in the last race, Bottas regrets the missed opportunity despite being pushed up the grid. He said “We had pace and, with such a mixed-up grid, there could have been opportunities to get a good result, so it’s disappointing to finish my race so early,” he continued.

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“It’s not the birthday present I wanted,” said Bottas. “But hopefully I can still have some fun before we turn our focus on next week.”

“It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time: I saw Latifi spin towards the left, and all I could do was take evasive action to avoid a collision.” The unintentional culprit of the collision, Nicholas Latifi did not expect to crash and was surprised, he stated “I thought I would go straight into the gravel and come back on slowly, but instead I spun across the track as a result and made contact with Valtteri.“

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Is Nicholas Latifi to blame for Valtteri Bottas’ early retirement or was it an unavoidable situation?

The Williams’ of Nicholas Latifi was part of an incident which ended in the early retirement of the Alfa-Romeo driver, Valtteri Bottas from the race. The Canadian driver had made an attempt to overtake Esteban Ocon’s Alpine but was forced off the track.

While trying to recover he ended up catching the Finnish driver unaware and having his front wing clipped by the right rear of Bottas.

This in turn resulted in Valtteri being beached in gravel and causing his early retirement from the race. Bottas’ early retirement cost the team a missed opportunity to score some much needed points in the championship.

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