BAKU — Valtteri Bottas believes a bizarre systems confusion triggered his race-ending crash at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, an incident at Turn 15 on the penultimate lap that almost changed the result at the Baku City Circuit as yellow flags left leader George Russell nursing turbolag to hold off Max Verstappen by just 0.1s at the chequered flag.
The Cadillac driver put his car into the barrier at Turn 15 on last Saturday's race, with the event continuing under yellow flags in the crash area for the final lap. While it initially looked like a driver error, Bottas pointed to a quirk of the 2026 power unit rules after he ran wide earlier on the same lap. "First of all, on the same lap I had a lockup into Turn 1, I went wide," he explained. "Then I think the systems got a bit confused because of the extra distance."
"I had a huge superclip into [Turn] 15 and then, when I hit the brakes, only the front brakes worked," Bottas said. "It was almost like I wasn't harvesting anymore with the rears, so something [got] a bit confused there. We need to have a look at what happened, but it was an odd one because it felt like I lost the rear brakes. It felt like I lost the rear [while] harvesting."
Bottas said the team needs to investigate the failure, which he linked to the extra distance covered after the Turn 1 excursion confusing the power unit's distance calculations. The ensuing yellows almost proved costly at the front, where Mercedes' Russell suffered turbolag after slowing for the caution and was pressured all the way to the line by Red Bull's Verstappen in a tight finish that followed George Russell's victory in Baku.