Bottas’ hopes of taking the fight to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the win ꧙in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix were ended by a disastrous pit stop 🎶on lap 30.

In the unusual incident, Mercedes’ pit crew were unable to get Bottas' front-right tyre off, leaving the team no option but to retire his ܫcar.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reꦿfused to blame the wheel gun operator for the botched stop and said “there are always many factors that contribute to such a catastrophic failure.” 

While the team has suffered delays from similar pitstop problems in the past, never before has it culmi⛦nated in a DNF.

“We ꦬcall it machining of the nut,” Mercedes technical director James Allison explained.

ꦺ“It’s a bit like when you take a Phillips head screwdriver and you don’t get it squarely in the cross of the screwdriver and you start﷽ to round off the driving face of the screwdriver slot. 

"Then you simply can’t take the screw out of whatever it is you are trying t♈o take it out of because you’ve no longer got the driving faces. 

“A very similar thing happened with our pit stop. If the gun starts spinning and chipping off the driv﷽ing faces of the wheel nut, then in quite short order, given the violence and power of the gun, you can end up with no driving faces and you just machine the nut down to a place where there’s n🧜othing left to grab hold of. 

“And that’s what we had today.” 

Allison revealed the wheel was still attached to Bottas’ car after the race and that Mercedes would need to wait to get back to its facto🥂ry to slice through the wheel nut with specialis🦄t equipment.

“We eventually didn’t get the wheel off, it is sat in our garage with the wheel stᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚill on it,” he added.

“It will have t𒊎o be ground off, get a Dremel out and painfully slice throug💝h the remnants of the wheel nut. We will do that back at the factory.”