Valtteri Bottas has revealed he suffered an eating disorder during the early stages of his Formula 1 career as he continuously fought against an addiction to training.
The Finnish driver was promoted to F1 and handed his top-tier racing debut with the Williams outfit in 2013 after a year on the sidelines as the team’s reserve driver.
However, his arrival on the scene came at a time when the overall weight of the cars was already set to increase with the introduction of hybrid powertrains a year later, and Bottas has now admitted at that time his relentless attitude to training “got out of hand”.
“I trained myself to pain physically and mentally,” he professed to Finnish journalist Maria Veitola.
“It got out of hand, and it became an addiction. No eating disorder was officially diagnosed, but it was definitely there.”
In his pursuit of marginal gains to eclipse the other drivers, Bottas has revealed that he would even live on steamed broccoli in a bid to reduce his weight even further.
“It wasn’t very healthy. I wanted to be the best, and I thought I had to do that. If the team says that I have to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weigh 73 kilos, then I’ll do everything for that.”
Bottas’ situation became so precarious that he eventually sought help with the form of a psychologist to help him differentiate and separate the elite sportsman from the human.
“To help me recover, I needed a psychologist whose first assessment was that I was almost like a robot who only wants to reach his goal and has no feelings at all.
“It unsettled me. It’s true that at that time I had no other life than F1.”
Following on from the likes of Lando Norris and George Russell, Bottas has become the latest star name in F1 to talk about how the extreme level of competition in the sport has damaged his mental health at some stage in his career.
Aside from the struggles he endured in his formative F1 days, the 10-time race winner has also opened up on requiring the help of a psychologist again midway through the 2021 season when it was confirmed he would be leaving Mercedes and his future within the sport looked in doubt.
“Last season [in 2021] was more difficult again, when the future was on the line, and I didn’t know which team I would drive for. It was a big step to ask for outside help,” Bottas said.
“That’s when you think when you’re such a tough guy that you don’t need help, that you can take care of things by looking in the mirror.
“But a professional knows how to ask the right questions and open a lot of locks. I’m not the only one there who sometimes has a hard time.”
Although the Finn is back plying his trade in the midfield with Alfa Romeo, Bottas has welcomed the change in environment after an “exhausting” five-year stint with the Mercedes team.
His time with the Silver Arrows saw him contribute to five Constructors’ Championships but without ever coming close to completing his personal goal of winning the Drivers’ title, and Bottas has said he found it increasingly hard to come to terms with a team-mate being superior to him.
“For such a competitive nature, it was hard to accept. It was only in the last year that I could accept that Lewis Hamilton was a better driver,” he explained.
“I always wondered how I could beat him and win the World Championship. It was quite an exhausting five years.
“I wanted to win everything right away, and then when it didn’t happen, it was hard to accept.”
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