A chuckle, a handshake and a quip of “I’m still alive” is how Valtteri Bottas greeted Motorsport Week's Phillip Horton in Abu Dhabi after the final grand prix of a marathon 21 race 2018 season. What was evident was that the Finn was reflecting on what could have been, another Formula 1 season in which his early promise dissolved into a catalogue of unfortunate setbacks.
Many expected that a Bottas 2018 win would come quickly but as the races were ticked off it never arrived. Bottas ended 2018 a win-less fifth in the championship standings, 161 points behind title-winning Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who climbed atop the podium on 11 occasions.
Bottas set a new record – but an unwanted one. No-one before has placed runner-up seven times in one season without soaking up the victor’s champagne, and those seven second places don’t include his nearest near-miss in Azerbaijan.
“What I can see and the team can see from the facts in general [is] it’s been better in terms of performance for me this year compared to Lewis on average, both in qualifying and the races, pure performance,” Bottas explained.
“But the results have been a lot weaker due to many strange races and so on.
“And obviously also then the points gap became quite big to Lewis and things are slightly different in that way.”
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Bottas’ year began with his “worst” event in Australia as he struggled to eighth after a completely self-inflicted crash in qualifying, but he hit back to finish a close second to Sebastian Vettel in Bahrain. An outstanding in/out-lap in China brought him to the cusp of victory, until strategy intervened, while in Azerbaijan a puncture three laps from home robbed him.
“I think it made a big difference,” Bottas said of missing those two wins, but it was not yet season-defining. “I don’t think there was anything mentally at that point. There were also a few races that were pretty bad for me, like example in France, Sebastian crashed into me at Turn 1, then at Silverstone I was leading five laps before the end and my tyres ended. In Hockenheim when Sebastian crashed I was leading but then on the pit stop I lost a position. There were many things like this.”
Bottas’ title ambitions were already hanging by a thread and team boss Toto Wolff’s ‘wingman’ comment did little to quell speculation that the Finn’s hopes were over. Around Monza time, in early September, Mercedes moved to completely back Hamilton.
“If you’re playing catch up [and] you can still see a realistic opportunity to catch up [it’s still fine],” Bottas added. “Once the chances are too slim then it becomes more difficult mentally. And it is always going to be different when you’re still fighting for the championship [compared to] when you’re not. It was quite similar timing in terms of thinking for the team and also my side. I knew the team had to make decisions at some point because we needed to really prioritise winning both titles…”
Bottas went on to nobly relinquish a certain win to Hamilton in Russia – “in the end for me [it’s as if] I won it” – but that was as close as he got. So what does the feisty Finn plan to address over the winter?
“I think it’s going to be a similar thing to [last year] to process everything. It’s been another learning year and character-building year for sure. I think once I’ll get a bit of rest this season is going to make me stronger and help me in the future. Because all the time you become more and more part of the team, the whole year has been good in terms of team spirit and how we work together. For sure we try and improve that; every year after in the same team is always going to be a better and better feeling.”
Bottas also knows that he and Mercedes will face renewed competition from Ferrari – bolstered by the signing of Charles Leclerc – and Red Bull, which will switch to Honda power.
“The competition is only going to get tougher,” he explained. “To start the season positively is always going to be a nice thing for the confidence of the whole team, but we’ve seen it’s not the end if things don’t go perfect in the beginning, it’s still going to be another marathon in a way, it’s a massively long season, a huge amount of points available, but every race we can do well at the beginning of the year it’s going to help.”
In being team-mates to the reigning World Champion it is impossible not to mention the presence of Hamilton, who swept away his opposition to storm to a fifth overall crown. The role of Bottas within the team has been crucial to such success.
“With Lewis we’ve been able to work better and better the whole time, the team is saying the spirit is better than ever before. So that’s good. We have really good team spirit, fighting spirit together, and I think it’s good we’re as we are. It’s just very honest, no hiding anything, that’s the best thing because even though it’s always difficult in Formula 1 being completely honest and open with a team-mate as in the end everyone is comparing you to your team-mate and you want to beat him and you might want to hide some stuff. But from day one we agreed we want to be fair and race on track, be open, because it’ll benefit the team and benefit us.”
Bottas’ biggest challenge is now surely regrouping and re-emerging as a title threat in 2019 – not such an easy task considering the might of his opposition, not to mention the presence of Mercedes backed Esteban Ocon waiting in the wings. 2018 may just be over, but for Bottas 2019 has already begun – and he needs a big response.
See also: Analysis – The races where it went wrong for Bottas
This feature first appeared in issue 294 of our sister publication Motorsport Monday – the world's leading digitial motorsport magazine published every Monday morning. You can subscribe for free by clicking here and we'll deliver it to your inbox every Monday.
