Even before his race-ending shunt, Valtteri Bottas was already having one of the worst weekends of his Mercedes Forꦑmula 1 career at Imola. 

Much of the post-race focus centred around his spectacular coming together with Williams driver George Russell that caused both drivers to v🌞iolently crash out of the race at half-distance as they battled for ninth place.

While the potential ramifications of the incident and ꦛargument over who was at fault for the collision were the focal ꦉpoint of attention in the aftermath, an equally important question lingered. 

Why was Bottas in such a lowly position and fighting a Williams in the fi🥃rst ꦉplace? 

“The wholeꦗ situation should have never happened,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff summarised after the race. “Valtteri had a bad first 30 laps and shouldn’t have been t🦩here.” 

Indeed, Bottas had endured an awful start to what turned out t𝓡o be a ✃miserable Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at a venue he had taken pole at just five months earlier. 

Having immediately dropped two places and fallen to 10th, Bottas made very little progress in the opening stജint and looked to be heading further backwards at the time of his crash with Russel🍌l. 

The incident occurred shortly after he had just been lapped by race leader Max Verstappen and overtake🧸n by Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin fo💯r eighth. 

Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton was also set to put a lap between himself and Bottas b♐efore he was caught out by damp conditions and slid off the track at Tosa. 

If anything, getting wiped out by Russell spared Bottas’ blushes of facing more potential embarrassment on what was fast turning into ♑a forgettable afternoon. 

Bottas admitted after the race that his performance across the weekend was nowhere near the level he expects from himself and stressed “the main thing we need to focus💜 on is why I was in that posit🐠ion.”

Tyre warm-up ultimately proved to be Bot🔴tas’ Achilles’ Heel at Imola. Despite making what appeared to be a positive start as he topped the timesheets in both practice sessions held on Friday, his weekend quickly unravelled. 

This was largely down to the fact that Bottas struggled to switch the Soft tyres on during cooler conditions in qualifying. He was unable to match the leading pace of Hamilton and the Red Bulls and that resulted i𒁏n him comi🦩ng under threat from improving midfield runners in Q3. 

Not only did Bottas fail to factor in the pole shootout, but he went on to end up a lowly eighth on the grid - behind Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and the McLaren duo. Bottas’ Q3 time ended up being slower than what he managed in Q1, which came after several attempts on the Soft tyres but would have been good enoꦛugh for P𝕴4.

“I ꧟think it’s a bit overall thing with our car,” Bottas explainedꦉ. “Over the years, we quite often struggle in hot conditions, and cold has been normally good because we’ve had good tyre warm-up. 

"We’ve been really trying to develop the car, but didn’t overheat the tyres, but obviously with the negati꧂ve that if we need tꦰo get quickly into the tyres, then maybe some other cars can do it better than us. 

“For me personally, for example, compared to Lewis, it’s so on a knife-edge in quali𝔍fying, that sometimes you get it to work, like for me in Q1, when I did a much faster time than in Q3, I got them to work.ꦺ 

“But for some reason, I couldn’t get them to work in Q3 the same way. It's all about one or two degrees of surface or tyre temperature. It’s hard to explain. O🦂bviously, track temp was changing a bit, depending how much cloud ꦬthere was etc, so maybe that had a bit of a factor.”

A downpꦜour of rain less than an hour before the race start only exacerbated Bottas’ warm-up issues furt♎her by creating even trickier conditions and leading to the majority of the field starting on Intermediate tyres. 

Bottas also struggled in similar conditions during last year’s Turkish Grand P🔯rix, with the Finn spinning no fewer than six times on his way to finishing 14th and being lapped by race-winner Hamilton.

“Obviously I had quite a struggle with the inters, being stuck behind Lance all through the inter section of the race, and when I stopped, obviously got presဣsure from the guys behind who stopped earlier and got thei🔴r tyres working already,” Bottas added. “That warm-up was the bigger issue.”

It is an issue that 🐓Mercedes is looking to get to the bottom of ahead of the Portugue🔯se Grand Prix. 

“There’s something there we need to understand,” said Mercedes’ ꦆtrackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. “The thing with tyre temperature is often a very small difference has a very big impact on the grip. 🍰;

“Unfortunately for Valtteri [in qualifying] he was just the wrong side of a lot of cars and that gave him a compromised start position. So that’s♔ one thing we’ll need to go♎ off with him and help him understand.

“In the race, he was struggling following and being able to overtaꦇke just because he was losing front end in the tow but also the rear wasn’t strong. Again, it was that theme of warm-up was a problem for him. 

“Then on the transition to Mediums the warm-up meant that he got caught in tꦜhat bunch of ca✱rs - Max was there as the leader coming through, and that was what really triggered the sequence that ended his race.

“There have been bits of the weekends where he has definitely looked very st🍸rong and parts where he actually looked like he’d give Lewis a tough time, and really I think all the negatives have come down to this issue of warm-up in those conditions and we need to find a solution to do that. I think if we do that the rest of it should click into place.”

The result is that after just two ꦯraces, Bottas already finds himself facing a 28-point deficit to Hamilton and risks being completely cut adrift in💞 the title race unless something changes fast.