Valtteri Bottas laments being outshone by rookie Mercedes teammate George Russell

Valtteri Bottas’ horror run of bad luck continued and he knows the way he was outgunned by a rookie F1 teammate wasn’t a good look.

Valtteri Bottas acknowledged he had a “pretty bad race” on Monday (AEDT), admitting it wasn’t a great look to be out-paced by George Russell in his first stint behind the wheel of a Mercedes.

Russell was called up for his Silver Arrows debut after Lewis Hamilton was ruled out of the Sakhir Grand Prix with COVID-19. The young gun was mighty impressive, qualifying second-fastest behind Bottas before zooming past him on the opening lap of the main event and at one stage opened up an eight-second gap in front of his new teammate.

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Despite being 1-2 and looking certain to lock up a double podium for Mercedes, disaster struck for both drivers. The pit crew accidentally put one of Bottas’ tyres on Russell’s car during a pit stop, forcing him to come in again and then on-track debris caused a puncture that relegated the Brit to ninth.

Bottas only finished one place above his colleague when a bungled pit stop forced him to stay still for nearly 30 seconds as the garage re-fitted worn tyres that were losing temperature — but the Finn wasn’t thrilled even before that incident.

“Thinking about it, for sure, if you don’t know things, then I’d have looked like a complete c*** and a fool. So that’s not nice,” Bottas said.

“It was a pretty bad race for me from that side, and it will be very easy for people to say a new guy comes in and beats the guy who’s been in the team for a few years. So it is not ideal.

“But the people who know, they know how is the performance, and they know how the end result could have been.

“I don’t know what to say really. Not ideal, obviously, this weekend.”

Bottas said he wasn’t thinking about the repercussions of losing to Russell when he was second behind Hamilton’s replacement, and was confident he could have closed the gap as the race wore on had the pit stop debacle been avoided.

But the 31-year-old was unable to get any heat into his tyres and watched on helplessly as Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo, Alex Albon and Daniil Kvyat all roared past him.

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Pit stops cost Mercedes badly in Bahrain.

“That was a nightmare, being on the old, hard tyres that had already lost a bit of temperature in the pit stop,” Bottas said.

“Against guys with fresh mediums around, I was like a sitting duck. It was a pretty nightmare situation.

“Normally as a team, we are bulletproof, we don’t do mistakes. But now we did, and it’s something we need to review and I’m sure we will learn from that.

“But obviously that destroyed the race because I left the pit stop with the same old hard tyre set that I came in with and I just couldn’t get them to restart under the Safety Car, and I had cars coming both sides passing me.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff wasn’t impressed with Bottas’ showing when he had the chance to stand up and push for a rare race win in Hamilton’s absence, saying: “I need to talk with (Bottas) and his crew but yeah, he did not shine today.”

Luck hasn’t been on Bottas’ side this year. Although second in the drivers’ standings, he’s miles away from leader Hamilton, who has already wrapped up a seventh F1 world championship ahead of the season-ending grand prix in Abu Dhabi.

The weekend before this latest horror show, Bottas suffered two punctures in the Bahrain GP to go with technical issues at Silverstone, Monza and the German GP. He also collided on the opening lap of the race in Turkey.

“If I would make a list of all the unlucky events that are happening in the races during this year it is quite a long list,” Bottas said last week.

“I mean, should I cry or should I laugh? I’d rather laugh. Some of those things there is nothing you can do obviously.

“It just sometimes happens. Of course people can have a run of bad luck and it can be many years or a short moment.”