Surer: Bottas Bahrain strategy was team call to pressure Verstappen

Valtteri Bottas was once again left frustrated in Bahrain by team strategy calls, when a pit stop intended to undercut the second-place Red Bull of Max Verstappen went awry and he was forced to be stationary for 10 seconds. After the race the Mercedes driver was critical of his team’s decision to pull him in when they did, and said that the strategy calls were not aggressive enough to put him in reach of a potential race win. And former Formula 1 driver Marc Surer told Motorsport-Total he thinks the decision by the team to call the Finn in when they did was a deliberate move to support race leader Hamilton in his battle with Verstappen. "[Wolff] doesn't want to tell the truth. [Mercedes] needed Bottas to put Verstappen under pressure,” he said. "With Bottas' early stop, they forced Verstappen to change tires as well,” Surer added. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has said he understands Bottas’ frustration after the race, but has insisted the German outfit were left with few other viable options. "I totally understand the frustration in the car when you have limited information and say ‘I think we could have done something else,’" Wolff told RacingNews365.com and other select members of the press after the Bahrain GP. "I think there wasn’t any strategy on the table, because we tried to undercut also with Valtteri that I think would change race for him or make his race not. "The outcome we wouldn’t wish for was that he lost a position at the start of the race and he kind of couldn’t recover the gap to the two guys in front. "The pitstop was there to undercut Max, and I think we would probably have been successful, but we had a problem with the right front wheel gun.