Circumstances outside of your control can relegate a moment of brilliance to nothing more than a footnote in history because it was all for nothing. Valtteri Bottas knows all about that, because that's been a big part of the story of his 2018 season.

Take laps 19 and 20 of April's Chinese Grand Prix, when the 28-year-old nailed a good in-lap and a mighty out-lap too. Combined with a stunning 1.83-second pitstop from his Mercedes team, that effort helped him take the lead from Sebastian Vettel with a brilliantly executed undercut.

Had he gone on to win the race - and there's every chance he would have done - this would have rightly been hailed as a brilliant piece of driving in the vein of Michael Schumacher. As it was, the timing of the deployment of the safety car rendered it moot because the plaudits instead went the way of Daniel Ricciardo after his storming drive from sixth to first.

About Edd Straw

Edd Straw is a former Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Autosport, who is now Motorsport Network’s Digital Content Manager.

Originally from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, he joined Autosport in 2002 having graduated from Warwick University. He went on to cover a wide range of categories from club motorsport to the World Touring Car Championship and Le Mans to Formula 3 before switching to F1 full-time at the 2008 French Grand Prix. He then became Autosport Magazine Editor in November 2014.

After becoming Editor-in-Chief of Autosport in June 2016, he took up his current wider Motorsport Network role in October the following year and continues to contribute as a writer, F1 correspondent and as host of The Autosport Podcast.

In his spare time, he was formerly a club racer whose abilities did not match his enthusiasm in a variety of categories ranging from Stock Hatch to the European Ferrari Challenge.