Current Valtteri Bottas

…….and finally Williams confirm that Valtteri Bottas will be in the race seat for the 2013 season. As I’m seen on here as his biggest fan I thought I better get an article written and a thread started for the lad.

Born 28th August 1989 in Nastola Finland he currently resides in Oxford. His single seater career started in 2007 with a 3rd place in the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC series, he followed that up in 2008 by winning the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC series and the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup series. In 2009 he stepped up to the Formula 3 Euroseries coming 3rd but winning the Maters of Formula 3 one off race a feat he was to repeat in 2010. 2011 was the year he suddenly jumped to everyones attention when he cruised to the GP3 championship and spent the whole season as Williams test driver impressing big time in the 2011 Abu Dhabi young drivers test by setting pretty competitive times in a car which wasn’t viewed as very quick. He was so impressive he put himself in the running for the Williams F1 seat but in the end the team went with bringing in the funds of Bruno Senna but satisfied Bottas with a contract which made sure he got plenty of running in the car on a Friday morning something that he grabbed hold of with both hands.

Not running in any other series meant Valtteri was concentrating completely on his job as Williams and a lot of essential team members at Williams have come out and said how much help he has been at setting up the car, which seeing as the Williams was a far better car this year can only be seen as a plus for him. A year doing test stuff must have been frustrating but in the long run I actually think it might be a big plus for him as he’s had a whole season of watching and learning how a technical team like Williams work and will certainly have a lot more knowledge of set up and how an F1 team works than the majority of rookies coming in. Of course its helped even more that he’s impressed in his Friday morning sessions, keeping pace with Maldonado on nearly every occasion and beating him on a fair few. This has of course lead to complaints from Bruno Senna about how he is not as quick due to not getting enough time but I can twist that round on itself because Bottas had even less time yet seemed to be able to jump in the car and be on the pace. What can he do with a full weekend in the cockpit? I guess we’ll see.

So we’ve seen he has pace, we’re told he had technical know how, and his junior career shows he knows how to win so it all looks good but having said that a lot of drivers have looked good and not been able to translate it so the proof is in the pudding as they say. So why have I championed him so much? Well to me Williams are a big team and should act like a big team. They got their Renault engines back and showed they can still design a car and produced a race winning one for 2012 and I can’t help but feel if their driver selection had been more about talent than funds we’d have seen them finish a lot higher up in the championship. Maldonado is a winner, he has pace, he just needs to calm down. I couldn’t say the same for Senna, so when you see a talented youngster who is obviously quick but has no financial backing whatsoever I can’t help but root for Williams to take a gamble on bringing him in.

So now we know he’ll get his shot and we’ll see whether he can match the faith shown in him. Lets also hope that Williams give him a car to show us he has talent. The second rookie on the grid for next year and this is the first rookie for a while that’s come in on talent with very little financial backing something I think Formula 1 could do with more of.

So before he turns a wheel what do we thing? The next flying Finn or the worst Scandinavian since Magnuersen?
 
No question.......Bottas will be the 2013 rookie of the year!

Good to see a rookie driver being able to enter the sport, without the backing of some oil company, or the richest man on the planet.
 
Interestingly Bottas manager is Toto Wolff which could lead to two things.

a) He falls out of favour very quickly at Williams if he doesn't deliever results from the off

or

b) Good season = Replacing Rosberg at Merc for 2014

A)
What kind of results?
The expectations won't be to high this season, he hasn't done any competitive racing for a year.
I regard him as a highly talented driver but I would still be surprised if he can match Maldonado's pace consistently on the opening rounds of the championship.

B)
What if Rosberg beats Hamilton in 2013^^?

I guess Bottas will be "stuck" at Williams for the coming two seasons, even if he out performs Maldonado. And if Williams run into financial difficulties he might not even make a second season in F1.
 
I tend to think it's mad speculating now on where he's going to be in 2014, his race performance will make the whole thing clearer. If he looks brilliant and wins races he could find himself at Red Bull, if he does a Pizzonia then DTM awaits. All the options are open until we can tell if Finland's impressive heritage has a new bearer or if he's looking at a year or less of pointless toil.
 
waldo.jpg
 
Just read this:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105911

Which is our Waldo saying how lucky he is to get a seat when he only has backing from some sort of finnish walnut company(they might not make walnuts) and it doesn't make him a special case just that Williams trust him and he has to pay that back.

Everytime I read an interview with him him comes across as more and more of a nice guy which makes me like him but worries me because I'm not sure nice guys win stuff in F1.
 
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