Bottas hit by MGU-K failure as F1 practice woes continue

Bottas suffered a Ferrari MGU-K failure on his very first lap in FP1, before he had set a time.

He managed to the car back to the pits, but the MGU-K issue meant that he broke the speed limit by 21.9km/h as he came in, earning himself a €1000 fine.

He was forced to sit out the rest of the FP1 session before finally getting some laps in FP2 after his team changed both the MGU-K and the gearbox.

Mick Schumacher experienced a similar issue with his Ferrari-powered Haas in FP1 and made the same changes.

The nightmare run of problems for Bottas began at Imola, where he suffered a broken exhaust and subsequent fire in Friday qualifying. He thus had to miss Saturday’s FP2 session while repairs were undertaken.

In Miami, he had a huge crash in FP1, and missed the later FP2 session, while in Barcelona he had an engine failure after just one flying lap in FP2.

Bottas joked to team boss Fred Vasseur that he might as well only turn up on Friday night for the next race on Baku.

“I told Fred already that for Baku I should maybe come on Friday night,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com about his ongoing misfortune.

“I mean, it’s unlucky. And another completely different issue, the MGU-K. I think the same issue in the same session happened to Mick, but I don’t think there were any in FP2. I’m sure they’re on it. I don’t know the cause.

“So not much we could do. I don’t think we can afford that many issues any more. And it’s still a long, long season to go. So let’s see.”

Regarding his pit speeding penalty, he said: “I got a speeding fine because the MGU-K was still on. I was on the limiter, but I couldn’t go slower. A bit of a strange one!”

Bottas admitted that Monaco was the one place where no driver can afford to miss a session.

“Definitely you need every lap, and it took took a while in FP2 to get used to it, and I definitely was getting more and more comfortable each lap.

“And also with the…