Valtteri Bottas reveals ‘starving myself’ to help Williams avoid car fear early in F1 career

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Valtteri Bottas has admitted that he once started “starving” himself whilst driving for Williams after the team raised fears that their 2014 season car would be overweight.

Bottas recalls how his “entire identity” was his racing career when he first broke into F1 with Williams in 2013. The 2014 season then presented the Grove squad with a huge opportunity to improve their form after striking a deal to buy Mercedes engines for the turbo-hybrid era.

Williams had bought their engines from Renault during the final years of the V8 era, but the introduction of 1.6L V6 turbo-hybrids in 2014 saw Formula 1 enter a new chapter. Mercedes even dominated F1 until 2020 after they spent years preparing their V6 turbo-hybrid engine.

The 1.6L V6 turbo-hybrid power units introduced in 2014 were a lot heavier than the old V8 engines, thanks largely to the battery system. So, the minimum car weight was increased by 48kg to 690kg, but Williams initially feared they would still be over the minimum car weight.

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Valtteri Bottas ‘started starving myself’ after Williams asked him to lose 5kg for 2014

Bottas has now recalled how Williams warned him ahead of the 2014 F1 season about their fears that the FW36 would be overweight, and how the team suggested he should lose five kilograms. F1 did not introduce a minimum driver weight, of 82kg, until the 2019 campaign.

READ MORE: Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas’ life outside F1 from girlfriend to wine and gin

As Bottas admits that his “entire identity was racing” at the time, he saw Williams’ request as a challenge. But the Finn now concedes that it became a “big problem” due to the extent he went to in order to lose weight and try to help Williams make their 2014 car “even quicker”.

“Back then, my entire identity was racing,” Bottas told The Players’ Tribune. “I did not give a damn about anything else. It’s not a problem until it’s a problem. And in 2014, it became a big problem.

“Basically, I started starving myself. It started with a simple diet. After my rookie season, we went on winter break, and the Williams team were predicting an overweight car for 2014. This was back when there was no seat-plus-driver weight minimum.

“So, the team suggested that I lose five kilos. If you put a clear goal like that in front of me, I am going to obsess over it. When you tell me five kilos in two months, my brain thinks, ‘Five? Why not 10? We can make the car even quicker’.

“So, I started eating steamed broccoli and a bit of steamed cauliflower for almost every meal. I can still smell the broccoli. Wet. Green. Plain. My god. 

“It was like a game to me. I would wake up and weigh myself every morning, and when I’d see the number go down, I’d feel a deep satisfaction. I would come back from a 90-minute run and eat my little bowl of steamed broccoli, just to have enough energy so I could go for another 90-minute run.

“I had this GPS watch, and my coach could track my training, my heart rate, everything. I knew he would think I was burning myself out, so I started taking the watch off and leaving it at home before my second session.

“The game became completely consuming. After two months of spiralling, my nerves were shot. I would wake up at four o’clock in the morning on my own, no alarm. My heart would be beating out of my chest. I’d have all this energy, and I’d think, ‘This is so great. I have so much extra time in the day to do all my training’.

“I was like a drug addict. ‘I’ve never felt better!’ Ha. Completely delusional. The actual reason I was waking up so early was that my body was in starvation mode.

“The worst part about it was that I would look in the mirror in the morning, and I would see my silhouette, and I was so satisfied that my reflection was getting slimmer. It was not about racing anymore.

“I don’t even know how much weight I lost in those two months. I looked sick. And of course, after everything I put myself through, we came back from the break and started testing the car, what do you think happened? The damn thing was actually underweight.”

Bottas had finished 17th in the F1 drivers’ standings during his rookie campaign for Williams in 2013, after scoring four points, as the team also ranked ninth among the 11 teams. Their move to Mercedes power units in 2014 then helped Williams and Bottas to climb the order.

The 2014 season saw Williams rank third in the constructors’ standings, as Bottas also came fourth in the drivers’ championship after scoring his first six Grand Prix podiums. Bottas took P5 in the 2014 season-opener in Australia and scored his maiden rostrum with P3 in Austria.