Valtteri Bottas’ metamorphosis from an extremely professional, corporate-friendly and inoffensive personality to one of the funniest and most colourful characters on the grid over his time at Sauber has been a real joy to behold.
Although he is no longer competing for podiums or victories – or even for points these days – Bottas seems to have been liberated without the pressures of the front of the field weighing upon him.
It’s easy to forget that Bottas is a multiple grand prix winner, having raced toe-to-toe with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc and beaten them on his day. Bottas is clearly capable of being a very fast Formula 1 driver, but there’s only so much a driver can do when they are in the slowest car in the field.
Despite his Sauber giving him very little to work with, Bottas has quietly been one of the most consistent performers of the season so far. It’s hard to pick out a weekend of his 14 so far that could be considered ‘bad’ and he has clearly been the superior of the two drivers in his team over the first half of the season.
Bottas has managed to escape Q1 almost half of the time this season – no small achievement in his car – and even reached the top ten shootout in China. Although he’s so far been unable to convert any of those top 15 starts into a point yet, it’s been hard to think of a genuine opportunity to do so that he’s let go begging. With reliability rates so historically high at present, there simply aren’t the chances to snipe a point or two like there would have been in years gone by.
Valtteri Bottas
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 12 (x2) | 17 |
| GP finish | 13 (x2) | 19 |
| Points | 0 | |
He recorded a genuine top ten finish in China by being classified in an impressive ninth place – but the fact that was a sprint race meant he missed out on a first point by a single position. In the grand prix, he was in contention for an outside hope of a top ten, only for his power unit to let him down in frustrating fashion.
Heading into the summer break in Belgium, Bottas had another solid weekend. Benefiting from the full suite of his team’s upgrades once more, he reached Q2 and got a decent start to move ahead of Daniel Ricciardo. Although finishing 15th was nothing to scream about, Bottas had finished ahead of multiple cars that had little excuse to lose to a Sauber over a race without any Safety Car interruptions.
But while that weekend at Spa was an example of Bottas putting in the hard graft for little reward, he hasn’t quite seemed able to tap into that higher level as often as he would want. More often than not, a Bottas performance is typically solid – but unspectacular. While he has not made many major errors of note throughout the season, it’s also true that the pressure is not the same when the car is not expected to be fighting for points to begin with.
It’s easy to overlook that Bottas is still one of the safer pairs of hands on the grid. But when a team is 14 rounds into a championship and staring at the possibility of going an entire season without scoring, they need something more than just ‘safe’ from their most experienced driver to turn things around.
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