Valtteri Bottas launches accusation at Mercedes after Max Verstappen steals win

Valtteri Bottas was clearly far from impressed after finishing third in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix with Max Verstappen going on to win the race as he accused his Mercedes garage of being “asleep”. Mercedes had once again proven to be the car to beat throughout the weekend at Silverstone.

Bottas and Lewis Hamilton were far and away the quickest in qualifying, with the former clinching pole ahead of his team-mate.

But Red Bull hinted at a different strategy for the race during qualifying as they had Verstappen using the hard compound as opposed to the soft.

It soon became clear in the race that Verstappen was on the better of the two strategies as he closed down on the Mercedes drivers.

Hamilton was unable to close up to Bottas before their first set of pit stops.

Verstappen though went 27 laps before coming in for the medium compound which soon put him ahead of both Mercedes drivers.

Mercedes opted to copy Verstappen’s pit strategy for the second set of tyres, bringing in Bottas at the same time as Verstappen.

Hamilton stayed out with Mercedes hoping his tyres may last until the very end.

But the Mercedes car struggled with tyre degradation as Verstappen began to fly away.

Bottas looked good to at least finish second before Hamilton pitted for a fresh set of hard tyres towards the end, giving him the pace to overtake his team-mate.

And the Finnish driver was left feeling frustrated at being unable to convert his pole position into a race win.

“Very frustrating starting from pole and finishing third is not ideal,” he said.

“I think as a team we were sleeping at some point when Max managed to get ahead of us.

“Our strategy was far from ideal so lots to learn from today.

He added: “I was trying and there was a chance to keep up with Max but as soon as I started to push too much at the end, the tyres just fell apart.

“Lots of blistering in the tyres for us today and you can see Red Bull had none so they clearly had an edge over there.”

By slipping to third behind Hamilton, Bottas dropped behind Verstappen in the championship standings heading into Barcelona next week.

Source: gpblog.com; express.co.uk; gpfans.com