After a strong performance in Istanbul, Valtteri Bottas hailed his victory in the Turkish Grand Prix as one of his ‘best ever’ races.
In the wet conditions, the Mercedes driver took the lead from pole and stayed clear of Max Verstappen for the first half of the race until switching to a second set of inters.
Bottas was able to pass the Ferrari after briefly losing the lead to Charles Leclerc, who stayed out longer on his first set of inters, and finally finished more than 14 seconds ahead of Verstappen.
Bottas, who hasn’t won an F1 race since the Russian Grand Prix in 2020, hailed his clinical performance in Istanbul.
“I think from my side I have to say probably one of the best races I’ve had ever,” said the Finn.
“Apart from one slide everything was under control. But, like I said before the race, the car has been really good in every condition and I had really good confidence with it, and really could control it.
“It’s not easy to choose the strategy here with these conditions, in terms of when to stop and to which tyre and everything. But I’m glad everything went smooth once for me and that’s nice.”
Verstappen had no reaction to Bottas’s performance, saying that he was in tyre preservation mode for much of the afternoon due to the need to extend the life of the intermediates.
“It was not easy today, the track was very greasy,” said the Red Bull driver. “We just had to manage the tyres the whole race so we couldn’t really push.
“It just seemed like Valtteri had a bit more pace and could look after the tyres, maybe a bit better as well. But I’m of course still happy to finish second because, in these conditions, it’s also easy to get it wrong and you drop back.”
When asked what part of the race was the most difficult, Verstappen said: “[To] stay awake! It was just all about just managing the tyres. So you were never pushing, [you had] to make it to a certain amount of laps, and then you boxed for another set.”
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