Quote Originally Posted by Zico View Post
Surprisingly the stewards report on the incident suggests Bottas didn't swerve... even though it looked that way to me initially also.

“The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 63 (George Russell), the driver of Car 77 (Valtteri Bottas) and the team representatives and reviewed multiple angles of video evidence and telemetry.

“Car 63 approached car 77 to pass after the front straight a few laps after the restart when DRS had recently been enabled. Car 77 maintained his line throughout the incident along the right hand side of the dry line, leaving at least a full car’s width to the right at all times.

“Car 63 approached with a significant speed advantage. He moved to pass on the right. As the cars approached the kink of turn 1, the gap between them and the right hand side of the track decreased. At no time did either car manoeuvre erratically.

“The track appeared to be not especially wet through turn 1 but at the point of closest approach to the right hand side of the track, the right hand side tyres of Car 63 hit an especially damp patch and the car snap yawed, bearing in mind that the car had low downforce in the rear with the DRS open.

“The Stewards conclude that the accident was a racing incident considering the conditions and take no further action.”

I guess the difference between a mere squeeze and a jink as Russell saw it, is relative to the closing speed. I can see this one both ways but if the telemetry showed that Bottas didn't do it, I feel they called it correctly.
Although bottas in retrospective indeed left enough space, he swerved more to the right than any other car at that point. More than russel could reasonally expect from someone who has no intention to hinder him.

Bottas tried and succeeded into scaring russel. He had every right to do this, since he left the space, so it was indeed a racing incident.

But it still was incredibly stupid from bottas to do this to someone who's already alongside you on a wet track. Either russel passed anyway, or he takes you crashing with him.