02/07/2018
NEWS STORY
When someone appears to be enduring a long run of misfortune, it is often jokingly claimed that if it were not for bad luck they'd have no luck at all.
That would certainly appear to be the case for Valtteri Bottas, whose season appears to be going from bad to worse through no fault of his own.
While the crash in qualifying in Melbourne accounted for his lowly grid position, it was poor team strategy in Bahrain, and the unfortunate timing of the safety car in China.
In Baku he picked up a puncture on a piece of debris just three laps from the end, while in France he was booted up the rear by an overzealous Sebastian Vettel.
Finally, in Austria, it all appeared to be coming good. Having taken pole, though losing out following a poor start, he fought back and was running second to his teammate when he suffered a hydraulics failure.
"The luck I'm having this year feels like a bit of a bad joke at the moment,'' said the Finn.
"My start was not ideal. I had quite a bit of wheelspin and there was less grip than we expected, so I dropped a few places.
"But going into turn three, I could recover two places and was back in second place," he continued. "After that the car felt strong, we were running well, but then I suddenly experienced a loss of hydraulic pressure. There was nothing I could have done to prevent the DNF. I guess it was just not meant to be today... but one day it will be."
"We will recover," he added. "First of all we need to find out what the issue was, why we lost hydraulic pressure. We will learn, but of course it hurts. At least we are racing again next weekend."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spielberg, here.