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?
 
So Bottas' Speed is Enormous.

I can believe that.

It's just a shame for him that Russel's speed is Gigantic and Hamilton's speed is one-of-a-kind....
 
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i missed stroll start on sunday in all melee. i watched back on YouTube & its really strange one because at 200m he is being extremely sensible. hanging back & giving himself room

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then at 50m he chucks rule number 1 out of the window of breaking in a straight line, decides go for gap that doesnt exist. loses back end & at that point he really is passenger. skates onto the grass

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It was all caused by Bottas who was being cautious and braked too hard and too early, then went back on the throttle before braking again, and subsequently was too fast into the corner.
 
very true Brogan there are cars all trying to avoid 1 accident. why bottas didnt just coast the 50m to braking zone will be mystery

but then comes flying in. I didn't realise how close Ocon was to disaster as well
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yeah that is what is expected, why you want to go from top 4 on the grid to bottom 4 on the grid i dont know, i understand it on the way up but not on the way down, because these are very competitive people & why would you want to go to a team where 10th is a great day, is F1 that good that you'd rather be 14th in F1 than competing near the front at le mans or indycar

but i guess that he banking on the 2022 rules who knows, but the problem is McLaren, Williams, Alpine, Ferrari, Aston Martin are also confident of & banking on doing a red bull in 2009. but there are going to many teams upset & disappointed as someone has to go out in Q1 where ever we are starting in 2022
 
This is the trouble when the second driver is good enough in the fastest car to be quicker than the fastest driver in the next fastest car but not quick enough to beat his teammate.

The beauty of Hamilton / Rosberg is that it was a hell of a scrap which ended 2-1 to Hamilton.Bottas hasn't looked like coming close.

Now that Red Bull are arguably slightly quicker than Mercedes and at the very least on a par with them, Mercedes can no longer afford to carry a second driver so Bottas had to go.

He'll spend a couple of seasons making up the numbers at Alfa before sodding off to who cares where.
 
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