31/08/2020
NEWS STORY
In his (vain) pursuit of his teammate, having failed to name him at the start, Valtteri Bottas asked his engineer if he had "one push" available in order to close the gap.
"Yes, but we agreed not to use it against each other," came the response, to which Bottas replied: "I never heard of that."
Asked about the call in the moments after the race, the Finn said: "I had no clue about that! Maybe they said it, but I don't recall."
Team boss, Toto Wolff was keen to 'clarify' the (mis)communication.
"There are no rules in place between the two drivers, they are allowed and free to race," he insisted. "In the morning, we agreed and discussed that we obviously have a limited amount of overtakes, and that we would try not to use them against each other, or the last one against each other.
"There is always the risk of needing it against Max or any other car," he added. "This is what we were referring to.
"With Valtteri obviously, this was maybe a miscommunication between him and some of the guys. That's why we reiterated it."
"I tried to use the opportunities," said Bottas. "The first one was the start, out of Turn 1 I got a better run than Lewis, so I had to actually lift to not run into the back of him. I tried to leave a bit of a gap to get momentum of the tow, but I was surprised how small the tow was, though the tailwind into Turn 5 made a difference.
"Actually it was the same on the restart," he admitted, "I was hoping to catch him, but I just couldn't."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa, here.