London - Mercedes expects an angry Valtteri Bottas to come back strongly after losing ground to team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the Formula One championship through no fault of his own in Monaco on Sunday. File picture: Benoit Tessier / Reuters. The Finn is now 17 points behind the five-times world champion after finishing third in Monaco following a pitlane collision with Red Bull's Max Verstappen early in the race. 123Movies Verstappen was handed a five-second penalty for the unsafe release, a sanction that dropped the Dutchman from second to fourth. Hamilton won, his fourth victory of the season, with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel promoted to second after Verstappen's drop. "Valtteri lost a second place, three points, and Mercedes (lost) a one-two," said team principal Toto Wolff on Sunday evening. "From Valtteri’s point of view, he will be gutted. He had the pace on the weekend, he could have been on pole in terms of raw speed and today P2 (second) was the
File picture: Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters. Monaco - Lewis Hamilton has won four grands prix and finished second in the other two and yet the Formula One leader feels his performance so far this season has been all a bit average. Rivals may want to take that with a pinch of salt, or go and lie down somewhere secluded, because on paper the Briton has never had it so good. Hamilton has also started on pole position twice, unleashed a blistering lap around the streets of Monaco at the weekend, and set one fastest lap. He has taken a record from Michael Schumacher with his 59th pole for a single team, one more than the German great managed at Ferrari, and with 77 wins is closing in fast on Schumacher's record 91. The five times world champion's own assessment, with 15 races remaining, is that he can and will do better. YesMovies "I definitely feel it’s been quite an average performance from myself, maybe above average but generally quite average for the first six races,"