Valtteri Bottas delayed at airport before arrival for Azerbaijan GP
Valtteri Bottas‘ race weekend has not got off to the best start. A plane issue has delayed his journey from Finland to Baku.
Mercedes had a poor outing last time at Monaco after running comfortably in P2, until his team were unable to remove one of his wheels during a pit-stop, forcing him to retire. Lewis Hamilton’s undercut strategy also didn’t pay dividend as the Brit ended in a disappointing P7.
The Finnish driver earlier revealed that the delay was as long as five-and-a-half hours. This long delay forced Formula 1 to organize his Thursday press conference virtually from the airport in Finland.
There have been four different winners in Baku, along with the four different polesitters – Mercedes with three out of the four. Bottas would have won the last two editions of the race until debris punctured his tyre in 2018, three laps from the finish line.
For Max Verstappen, the track has never been his nor Red Bull’s happiest hunting ground. Verstappen’s best finish fourth here in 2019. He was also involved in a nasty collision in 2018 with Daniel Ricciardo.
Verstappen has already reversed his bad fortune at tracks like Bahrain, Imola and Monaco this year. He should be expected to try and increase his F1 Championship lead this weekend.
Mercedes Team Principal spoke before the race saying (h/t Planet F1 ) :
“A key focus for us has to be exploiting the opportunities available to us on those outlier tracks which aren’t suited to our car – when the points are there, we need to grab them.”
“There will be swings back and forth in this fight which is exciting for the sport and exciting for us,” he added.
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