Ever since Valtteri Bottas officially signed for the Alfa Romeo Racing, it looked like the Finn had just dropped a giant burden off his head. The Mercedes driver looked more challenging, as he even went on to win the Turkish Grand Prix after delivering a mind-blowing comeback drive at Monza.

However, one thing has prevented Bottas from pursuing bigger successes – Mercedes themselves. Despite Bottas looking challenging enough in Austin, Mercedes announced that the Finn would carry a new ICE, meaning he would also receive a 5-place grid penalty.

Subsequently, accusations poured in, with many slamming Mercedes for ‘favoring’ Lewis Hamilton by keeping Bottas away from the top 3. Well, according to Motorsport strategy director, James Vowles, the reason is far from favoring the title contender.

What did the Mercedes strategy director say?

The British engineer reckoned that the frequent component changes in Bottas’ car are the result of balancing performance and reliability.

“The reason is that we are balancing performance versus reliability to the end of the season,” he said during the post-race debrief on social media.

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“One failure to finish a race be it because of a chassis or a power unit fault would be catastrophic for the championship. And as a result of that, we are managing that in the best way possible to the end of the year. In the case of Valtteri, that meant taking one further ICE to make sure we had absolutely the best compromise.”

Did Valtteri Bottas’ pace improve with the ICE change?

Well, Vowles grazed over the answer, ‘No,’ but finally affirmed that there was indeed a minor improvement in pace for Bottas at COTA.

“As to whether it improved his performance, yes, a small amount. But, it is more about the balance across the remainder of the season than one event. So, this change, as painful as it was during the Austin Grand Prix, will actually pay dividends across the next few races,” he said.

Bottas is certainly not happy with Mercedes’ decisions in recent weeks, obstructing the Finn from clinching podium positions. But there’s hardly anything he could do about it, with the trigger button in the hands of Toto Wolff.

Hence, Bottas will be aching to return to the mid-field, where it is likely that Alfa Romeo will treat the Finn as the number 1 driver. But will he ever manage to secure the equal amount of success he garnered at Mercedes AMG?

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