Bottas handed five-place grid penalty he may never serve · F1 · RaceFans

The stewards have issued a five-place grid penalty to Valtteri Bottas which he may never serve.

The Sauber driver collected two penalties during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for collisions with different drivers. His second, with Kevin Magnussen, led to his retirement.

The stewards held Bottas responsible for the collision and handed him a five-place grid penalty for his next race. “Car 77 [Bottas] was on the inside of car 20 [Magnussen] on the approach to turn six, misjudged his braking significantly and collided with car 20 which was entering the corner on the regular racing line,” they ruled.

“As car 77 retired from the race, the stewards determine that a grid drop is warranted which is the equivalent of a drive-through penalty and three penalty points are warranted due to the significant misjudgement of the driver.”

As Bottas was in his final race for Sauber and has no race contract for 2025, it remains to be seen whether his penalty will ever be applied.

“It was my bad,” he admitted after the race. “I was defending with old tyres and I tried to brake as late as I could but I just couldn’t stop the car.”

Bottas’ race began to go awry on the first lap when he tangled with Sergio Perez. The stewards also ruled he was entirely to blame for that collision, saying Bottas: “attempted to overtake car 11 [Perez] on the inside into turn six, but ran over the inside kerb and hit the rear left wheel of car 11.”

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The stewards gave Bottas two penalty points for the Perez collision, meaning he went from none to a total of five in his final race as a grand prix driver for the foreseeable future.

“It’s definitely not the ideal finish but these things happen,” said Bottas. “It’s racing, it’s not the first time. Everything just went wrong since lap one.”