Former Formula 1 driver turned BBC pundit Jolyon Palmer has issued a pretty damning verdict on Valtteri Bottas after the Finn's struggles at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The Mercedes team as a whole had a weekend to forget around the streets of Baku as both their drivers failed to score.

Lewis Hamilton, of course, had a chance at victory but locked up upon a race restart with two laps to go and dropped to the back-end of the field, whilst Bottas was 'nowhere' - as Toto Wolff put it - for the duration of the weekend.

Indeed, even with the chance of making up places at the restart, Bottas could not fight his way into the top ten with compatriot Kimi Raikkonen one of those to jump him in the closing laps and it's that struggle to make gains in the midfield that has drawn Palmer's ire.

Speaking to the BBC, the former Renault driver issued a pretty blunt take on Bottas' performance on Sunday:

“Bottas in wheel-to-wheel, every single time you see it, he is really poor at wheel-to-wheel fighting.

“You put him in the midfield with a bunch of cars around him, he will not go forwards. At best he will hold position, probably he will go backwards.

“Can you remember a good overtake of Bottas’? You struggle to think of overtakes that Bottas does. He is in the midfield and he stays in the midfield.

“Or, he just gets shuffled down. The restart that he had was a little bit like the start he had in Monza last year, where he started at the front and at every corner just got shuffled down.

“In the end, he beat Mick Schumacher, Nikita Mazepin, Hamilton who did a U-turn in the run-off area, and [Nicholas] Latifi who had a stop/go penalty.”

Frank words from Palmer with Bottas surely eager to move on from the last two rounds in fact.

In Monaco, he was denied a second place after a jammed wheel-nut and he's now gone two pointless races straight.

The French Grand Prix should be stronger for Mercedes, however, and he'll be looking to make use of that fact.