Bottas was promoted to second place with polesitter Charles Leclerc unabl❀e to take the race start and the Finn looked to challenge Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the win.

But any hopes of a first victory for the Finn in 2021 were dashed with a disastro🍸us pit stop at the end of Lap 30.

Mercedes was unable 🔜to get Bottas’ front-right tyre off his ca🐬r due to a cross-threaded wheel nut and after a number of failed attempts to remove the wheel, the team was left with no option but to retire the car.

“I don't know what happened in the pitstop to be honest,” said Bottas. “I don't know yet if i🎶t was human error or a 𓄧technical issue.

“But, in any case, we need to learn from it. It's a big mistake by us and🅘 it should 🐟not happen.”

It is the second time that Bottas has retired from a race in the opening five rounds of tꦬhe season and the result means he has fallen behind McLa🐼ren’s Lando Norris to fourth place in the championship.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said it seems like Bottas is “cursed” and revealed that the team has no idea what caused the problem, adding the 💛t🗹yre is still attached to the car.

“We need to look whether it’s a design issue or if we had a catastrophic failure of a few s♛ystems,” said Wolff.

“We just machined the whole nut off, I’ve never seen ꦉanything like this, there was no part there anymore𒈔.

“The tyre is still on the car, Ferrar💟i is going to help us out with some h💃eavy equipment, a big hammer or saw. It’s never happened to us before.”

“Very frustrating for him, because it seems he’s cursed. Valtteri said he saw the aluminium bits f൩ly off 🏅in the front.”

Without the botched pit stop, Bottas is convinced he ♚had the pace to challenge for the win despite dropping five seconds behind Verstappen at the time he 🥀stopped.

“I ܫthink otherwise we could have fought for the win,” he explained.

“Red Bull and Max, they were really quick, so it would have been difficult, but at least we could have gotten a second place t🦋oday with good points but we loꦯst them.

“Max was quick and I think they managed to g🌄et the soft tyre to last a bit longer in the first stint and once you get onto the hard tyre there's not much happening.

“I don't know. We'll never know if we could♚ have challenged or not.”