Bottas says he must not dwell on "amateur" error in China

The Finn's hopes of a podium finish in Shanghai were wrecked when he lost control of his Mercedes while trying to keep tyre temperatures up during an early safety car phase.

The spin, and a lengthy recovery from the grass, dropped him from fifth to 12th. Despite recovering to finish sixth, he said sorry to the team afterwards over the radio for his "amateur" error.

Asked by Motorsport.com about how the team had responded to what happened, Bottas said: "I definitely apologised to everyone. Silly mistake. I guess this happens but it's still pretty shit when it happens to you.

"But the main thing is not to do it again. And I'm glad Bahrain is in one week. The worst thing to do now is to not stop thinking about that mistake.

"I need to understand how I can prevent it in the future and just need to move on. I know the pace is there, I can do very good things with the car - and I think as a team we did a stronger job in terms of car pace than what we had on Sunday in Melbourne.

"We just need to keep going and the results will come."

Mercedes pace

Bottas reckoned that without the error he would have been battling with Sebastian Vettel for the runner-up spot behind Lewis Hamilton.

"I think definitely there was a chance to fight for a 1-2 with the cars," he said. "I felt we were just slightly quicker than Ferrari. So that could have been possible, I think.

"I think we did a better job in terms of understanding the tyres for Sunday, but also the conditions were very different.

"So, Bahrain again now will be much hotter, so it's going to be another test and we'll see how we compare to Ferrari.

"It seems to be very very close, depending on conditions in the sessions, so I'm sure we'll have a good close fight again with Ferrari in Bahrain."