SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium -- Valtteri Bottas is refusing to rule himself out of the 2017 Formula One title fight despite slipping 41 points behind Sebastian Vettel in Belgium.
Bottas was never able to match the pace of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in Spa, something he was unable to explain after missing out on a front row slot on Saturday. The Finn spent much of the race in third position until a late Safety Car put him under pressure, with Mercedes having to stay on soft tyres while its rivals switched to fresh ultra-softs having used its own remaining sets earlier in the weekend.
At the restart the tyre disadvantage hurt Bottas, who was passed by both Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen, eventually settling for fifth. While teammate Lewis Hamilton cut the gap in the title fight by beating Vettel to victory, Bottas slipped further behind the main pair.
When asked if he was worried a result like Belgium could end his title hopes and force Mercedes to focus on Hamilton's title bid, Bottas replied: "I don't know, I think it depends a lot on me, also. If I manage to perform well, if I manage to get pole position and escape in the races, then it's in my hands as well, if I perform well. There are still eight races to go, there's a good amount of points for grabs.
"The guys that are ahead of me in the championship, they may get some DNFs hopefully -- hopefully not for us, but it can happen, but I don't think that way. I don't let those negative things come to my mind. For sure at some point I'll understand if the team wants to really go for the championship to make sure, at least, that one of their guys wins it, but it's a bit early and we're still going race by race. Different races bring different situations, so we'll see."
Though Bottas was caught out by the restart and the tyre disadvantage, his pace before the Safety Car period, and the fact Kimi Raikkonen had been shuffled down the order with a stop-go penalty, suggested he was set for the final spot on the podium. Mercedes' tyre selections earlier in the weekend had left it with an extra set of soft tyres -- its strongest compound from the weekend.
Though that decision ultimately hurt him in the closing stages Bottas maintains Mercedes did the right thing in how it approached the weekend.
"It's always difficult to predict this kind of things, like the Safety Car and then we only had one new set of Softs and, for sure, if there was an extra set of fresh ultra-softs it would have been better. In these conditions I think we've made the right choices, our car was really good on the soft tyre but it's easy to say afterwards that in normal circumstances we could have done differently.
"We were just a little bit unlucky, at the end of the day, with the Safety Car. For sure, looking back, it would have been better to have fresh ultra-softs available for the restart but it's a bit too late now, because the tyre choices are made two months before the start of the Grand Prix...''