Valtteri Bottas recalls ‘most difficult’ spell at Mercedes which left F1 star with point to prove

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Valtteri Bottas has recalled how the ‘most difficult year’ he spent at Mercedes left the Finn with a point to prove in Formula 1 and it returned the ‘best’ season of his career.

The current Sauber star spent five years at Mercedes from 2017 to 2021 as the teammate of Lewis Hamilton. It marked the only time to date that Bottas has spent consistently at the top of the Formula 1 grid after starting his Grand Prix career at Williams during the 2012 season.

Mercedes turned to Bottas when the Silver Arrows suddenly had to seek a new driver on the back of Nico Rosberg retiring straight after he won the drivers’ championship in 2016. Bottas was a promising candidate at the time after taking nine podium finishes while with Williams.

Valtteri Bottas views 2019 as his ‘most difficult year’ at Mercedes

His move to Brackley then put Bottas in Formula 1’s winners circle 10 times. The 34-year-old even secured his inaugural victory only four races into the 2017 season at the Russian Grand Prix. Bottas also scored the first of his 20 pole positions yet in round three at the Bahrain GP.

But while wins, poles and podium finishes followed in his first year with Mercedes, 2018 was a bleak period for Bottas. The Finn achieved just fifth place in the drivers’ standings with 247 points compared to champion Hamilton’s 408. Bottas had sealed third in the 2017 standings.

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Failing to win a single one of the 21 Grand Prix, of which Hamilton won 11, also left Bottas in an unwanted position. So, he returned in 2019 believing the Finn still had a point to prove in F1. Bottas also went on to get four wins from a possible 21 and take second in the standings.

“I had probably my most difficult year with Mercedes the year before,” Bottas told the F1 website. “So, I actually had quite a bit of frustration. In 2018, I wasn’t able to win a single race. I did have multiple podiums and some good results, but the wins never happened.

“I really wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to happen again. I wanted to, let’s say, come back with a big boom. And in the end, I felt like that’s exactly what happened in 2019, which happened to be my best year so far in F1.”

Valtteri Bottas proved his point in the perfect way to start the 2019 Formula 1 season

Bottas kicked off the 2019 Formula 1 season in the perfect way by winning the opening race at the Australian GP. He also took another win in round four at the Azerbaijan GP in between three runners-up results. It helped to lay the foundations for a career-best 326-point season.

His 2019 campaign further featured Bottas’s single-season records for wins with four and for podiums with 15 over the 21 races. The Finn even set his joint record for pole positions with five – a figure he matched in the 2020 season. But Hamilton still lifted the title by 87 points.

Bottas also finished the 2020 season as the runner-up to Hamilton by 124 points in his final year with the silver spoon. The Finn saw out his Silver Arrows career with third place in the 2021 standings before George Russell switched Williams for Mercedes to partner Hamilton.