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?
 
yeah unfortunately he started so well but yes Lewis on another level since the summer break but Bottas has dropped a level is underperforming. not since austria could you say he matched Hamilton

is it wrong to say that despite the stick weve given kimi. he's actually performing better than bottas. at the moments i dont see how bottas stays past 2018
 
Last edited:
Certainly not given Ricciardo or Sainz are potentially available then someone at Mercedes also expects Ocon or Wehrlein to be promoted alongside Hamilton to show that investing in young drivers is worth it
 
It's truly bizarre to see how Bottas' pace has fallen off since mid-season. While he wasn't always a match for Hamilton in the races, in qualifying it was close between them for the first half of the year (taking their fastest laps in Q3, Q2 at Monaco):

HAM-BOT_2017.jpg


We understand that the Mercedes is a difficult car to set up - but is there more to it?
 
I think it comes down to "you are number 2" being over the summer. Being told your number 2 tends to knock your confidence and send your form spiralling until you are crazy completely and utterly number 2.
 
I think whatever James Allison and Mercedes have done to the car its benefitted Lewis much more and he's just made the gap bigger.

What is troubling Bottas is he is not a match on race day either which is something that Button could make up for. Bottas is going to start to feel like Gerhard Berger who simply has no answer to the phenomenal speed of Hamilton
 
Was it Button who said "if Lewis ever works out how to consistently access the talent he has, the rest of us may as well go home"?

Maybe Bottas is just in the unlucky position of being Lewis's teammate when it has 'clicked'
 
I think that really good F1 drivers have quite complex personalities. You can’t really say that about Bottas. Calm / passive is how he comes across.
 
I think that really good F1 drivers have quite complex personalities

I think that everyone has a quite complex personality. The defining traits of a champion F1 driver are that they live for adrenaline and hate to lose.

Not sure Bottas hates losing as much as others.
 
I don't think Bottas is as laid back as he looks to the naked eye. He's just being stuffed at the moment.. he does get angry when it seems Raikkonen is the one that always seems to hit him
 
Hamilton is an exceptional driver and driving at a level few could achieve I remember Senna doing this to his teammates simply because he was so fast
Bottas is finding it tough maybe he needs to speak to Rosberg how to overcome this
 
Can Mercedes not hear him scream, "I want to be released!"?

Why didn't Mercedes promote Ocon or, well it has to be said, Wehrlein? I can't stand it anymore. We had some exciting battles between Rosberg and Hamilton. If Mercedes aren't challenged next season, it'll be a one man show, like 1992 when Mansell won the championship.
 
Slight overreaction? He was fine until Spa, he just needs to rediscover that. A new car might suit him better too. Surely he didn't lose six tenths overnight.

Plus would Hamilton have done any better, in a normal race? I'm not certain he would.
 
Galahad
He‘s racing for a top team and at the moment Mercedes speed is good enough on most tracks to beat Ferrari and Red Bull which means he can kind of keep up with them. However, if they‘re are equal next year then he‘d drop behind them significantly with his current form.
His form drop is very worrying and it’s persisted for the last seven races - that’s nearly half a season!

No, he didn’t lose six tenths over night, he lost them during the four week summer break.
 
Last edited:
Martin Brundle summed him up, steady. Not sure if any of you saw the driver interviews but he claims changes made to the car mid-season meant he has had to change his driving style and he drew an analogy with a golfer learning a new swing.
 
Back
Top Bottom