This was both terribly sad and absolutely hilarious.
You’ve been there before: In a rush, trying to get somewhere important, and, sure enough, you have to switch out the tire on your car. You scurry back to the trunk, get the jack, hoist that flat off the ground and go straight for the first lug nut and … nothing. Doesn’t budge.
Where you go next depends on your own personal MacGyver quotient and/or whether you have AAA and think they can get there soon enough.
It’s usually inconvenient, but whatever.
Now imagine you’re the pit crew for a Formula 1 car in one of the world’s most prestigious races, the Monaco Grand Prix. If this happens to you … well, it’s highly, highly embarrassing and costly.
And it did! To poor Valtteri Bottas.
The tire never came off and Bottas was forced to retire. That’s just absolutely devastating.
Bottas, who was in second at the time, said after the race that he felt he would have been in position to win the race had the snafu not happened; Max Verstappen ended up in first.
Here’s how the Mercedes team explained what happened:
Bad luck and controversy have seemed to follow Bottas recently, so this was wrenching to see.
But it’s also the sort of thing the internet mocks ceaselessly. People on Twitter had so much fun with it.
