Valtteri Bottas has claimed that there was no way he could finish any higher in today's Bahrain Grand Prix, after a very slow pitstop hampered his early progress. The Finnish driver showed some decent pace in the opening stages, managing to match both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in terms of lap times after repassing Charles Leclerc. However, any possibility of getting in the mix for the race win went out of the window after a calamitous pitstop, in which an issue with the left front tyre caused him to be stationary for over 10 seconds. "I think, yeah, this long pitstop unfortunately cost me quite a lot today," Bottas told Sky Sports F1. "You know, when you're competing with close lap times with Lewis and Max, you can't afford to lose 10 seconds, we can't get it back. "That's how it goes. So quite unlucky with that. I don't know for myself, because we're going to review everything and look, but for me, the feeling was we were more passive than aggressive with the strategy." His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, just about hung on to take the race victory against a surging Max Verstappen. Despite being frustrated by his own bad luck, the 31-year-old does take plenty of positives from the weekend to carry into the next Grand Prix at Imola. "As a team, we've got really good points. And if we were told in winter testing that we're going to be here getting more points than Red Bull, we would take it," Bottas concluded. "There are positives and I think my race pace was positive, which has been the main focus really over the winter, testing and practice."
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