Valtteri Bottas s🔴ays he had no chance to avoid hitting the debris which left his Mercedes Formula 1 car with floor damage during the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The Finn kept the lead from pole position at the start and appeare🥀d to be comfortable ahead of Red Bull’s Max 🦄Verstappen and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in the early stages.

But Bottas ran over a broken endplate from Sebastian Vettel’s car at the Tosa hairpin on the second lap following a collision between the Ferrari driver and Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, with the piece of debris becoming lodged under his W11 and causing🥂 him to lose significant performance.

“It was on the racing line and I didn’t have time to react, there was that big piece of carbon,” Bottas explඣained.

"So, I decided and what I had time to do was to aim at least on how to hit it, so I went straight o𝓀ver instead of going over with one of the tyres and possibly getting a puncture.

"Unluckily, it got stuck under the floor and, apparently it was 15 points ♈of downforce, which in lap time it’s quite a big chunk. How it affected the car, I would say it made that in some corners I could feel the car sliding a bit and in some braking it was a bit unpredictable.

“So sometimes I would lock the wheels and sometimes it was stopping pretty quickly, so it was not really consistent the downforce I had ✅in the car.  That made it really tricky and I could see that I didn’t quite had the pace and Max was putting a lot of pressure.

“In the end, he got through, because I had ꩵto push over my limits to try and mainta𒀰in the position, I had a lock up and that was it.

“It was not my day, I had no chance, wit💞h that debris in the car, to fight for the win, unfortunately, but, at least we could secure a one-two, which is the perfect way to secure the seventh world championship for the team in a row.”

Bottas ultimately finished second behind Hamilton after Verꦺstappen was sent spinning into the gravel when he suffered a right-rear tyre failure in the closing stages.