getty

“I would guess he had some kind of issue, I don’t know.

“It is surprising to see them struggling, but it’s also nice to be able to battle with them.

“I think this was kind of the best-case-scenario for our first season together that I could ever imagine, with the information I had.”

Bottas had to retire in Jeddah due to a rising engine temperature, and claimed his late DNF was ‘how racing goes’ and is looking for improvements going forward.

“It’s a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least”, he said.

“The engine temperatures kept rising. We need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn’t want to lose the engine.

getty

“It’s how racing goes. We now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on.

“Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts.

“We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles. Now let’s make sure we get back to scoring in Australia.”