Valtteri Bottas has been released from the medical centre following his heavy crash at the end of qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver made heavy contact with the TecPro barrier at turn 17 after initially hitting the wall at the exit of turn 16.Mercedes confirmed he was taken to the medical centre for checks but has been released and is returning to the paddock.
Bottas qualified sixth on the grid for tomorrow’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Mercedes is evaluating the extent of the damage to his car in order to determine whether he is at risk of incurring any grid penalties from the repair work.
A team spokesperson said his car was “extensively damaged” in the crash.
Bottas later apologised to the team for the crash in a social media post. “I’m all good but apologies to the team for the extra work tonight,” he wrote.
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Mark (@mrcento)
26th October 2019, 20:39
A bit strange to have the barrier sticking out at that point he hit after he was already in the wall, thankfully he’s ok.
Imagine 2 cars coming out the final corner, one gets better traction and tries to go round the outside and the driver on the inside just squeezes a bit too much and that was impacted at racing speed?, Helicopter accident.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
26th October 2019, 20:51
Agreed. its the fia that thinks the halo protects from everything, not the drivers.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
26th October 2019, 21:03
My thoughts too. Maybe it’s the benefit of hindsight, but the way it sticks out just seems so obviously like “an accident waiting to happen”. One would have expected the barrier to have some sort of “crumple zone” or angling to minimise the G-forces of an impact. I think Valtteri is very fortunate to not have been seriously injured because of that barrier.
Anyway, now the Marshalls are going to have to rebuild the barrier to make that part of the track safer … the way it should have been done in the first place.
OOliver
26th October 2019, 22:18
Because it was an unusual accident, like he deliberately drove into the padding.
Usually a car would spin and the safety barrier would reduce the impact. In this case he just peeled the padding and struck it at an odd angle well away from the normal car trajectory.
LB (@burden93)
26th October 2019, 20:43
Glad he’s okay, that was a big hit. They need to have a look at that barrier placement, lucky it wasn’t more serious
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
26th October 2019, 20:49
Good to hear that he is okay. awful barrier layout. Masi again not doing his job.
I had max for pole but he made a rookie mistake not slowing down for Bottas.
Jere (@jerejj)
26th October 2019, 20:52
@peartree Max didn’t necessarily ignore the yellows, though. That is something that depends on the specific mini-sector time, not the entirety of sector three nor the entire lap
It’s legitimately possible to set a purple lap time (or sector time) and still lift sufficiently for yellow-flags even on a dry track. It’s perfectly viable that he was significantly enough ahead in delta time after S2 that he, therefore, managed to remain positive in that delta despite slowing down at the last corner, i.e., lost time, but not all of it.
Mo
26th October 2019, 21:08
Max said he didn’t lift for the yellow flag
Neiana (@neiana)
27th October 2019, 6:06
@jerejj I’m glad you are completely fine with the idea of another accident such as Correa and Hubert were involved in. Actually, I’m not, so I’m glad that he was severely penalized and I hope that all such instances carry the same weight in the future. We have lost two amazing drivers over the last few years specifically because Formula 1 is all about lifting as little as possible when there is a car in the barriers with the potential to bounce back out on track.
Jere (@jerejj)
27th October 2019, 7:59
@neiana That’s far from what my point is about, though. My point is legitimately based on facts on how these types of situations tend to be handled. This time the overall time improvement did come directly from the specific mini-sector where the yellows were active after all. Still, the same wasn’t the case with Nico Rosberg in Hungary, nor Hulkenberg in Austria in 2016, so these are always individual cases concerning whether a driver has or hasn’t heeded for yellow flags – not necessarily the same outcome every time.
Neiana (@neiana)
27th October 2019, 9:37
@jerejj and it doesn’t matter for a single moment what your point is because the real point is that when your whole purpose is to lift for a fraction of a second–if at all–in situations like this, you continue to run risks of having another Hubert/Correa accident. This is a fundamental flaw in Formula 1 and nobody is willing to address it. Bottas’ car was on the outside of a corner and had Max lost control or if there were some dampness in the track or something leaking from Bottas’ vehicle, that could have very easily been Max driving smack into Bottas.
That is my point.
anon
27th October 2019, 8:15
@jerejj, the onboard footage and telemetry shows that Verstappen makes no attempt to lift the throttle – he stays flat out during that corner. The fact that it was a yellow micro-sector only tells you that he has not improved on his time through that section of the lap – it doesn’t tell you whether he actually made any effort to consciously slow down.
It is quite clear from the onboard footage that Verstappen isn’t making any effort to slow down or to otherwise obey the yellow flag rule (slow down and be prepared to take evasive action), whereas all of the drivers behind him do quite clearly slow down as they approached that sector.
Waffling meaningless statements about whether he improved in a micro-sector or not seems to miss the rather obvious point – Verstappen has a clear requirement to slow down for the safety of track workers and other drivers in that situation, and the telemetry and onboard footage shows that Verstappen quite clearly had no intention of doing so.
joe jopling (@jop452)
26th October 2019, 21:07
Despite running along the wall…was probably doing around 90/100 mph when he hit the final piece of barrier…and then came down to zero in a couple of seconds….no wonder he was winded….he may not be able to take part in the race tomorrow….but could be from the pit lane, depending on repairs…..wonder if they could get dispensation for Ocon to start at the back if Valteri had to be rested
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
26th October 2019, 22:37
Good to hear BOT is ok. The emergency crews and medical staff took WAY TO LONG to arrive on the scene. Disgraceful! If the car was on fire or the driver was seriously injured, it would have been a tragedy. This needs to be investigated.
Yaru
27th October 2019, 8:47
I agree that it needs to be investigated and find out where things can be streamlined to improve like always.
But I wouldn’t call it disgraceful, I’m sure they did their best they could.