Valtteri Bottas Must Consider Himself A Tad Bit Lucky

It can be said as a matter of fact that Finland’s F1 driver Valtteri Bottas is among the talented drivers out there on the current F1 grid. It didn’t change the fact that despite all that hard luck that Valtteri Bottas had to endure in a barely drivable Visa Cash App car, the driver still had the talent and willingness to go out there and perform to the best of his ability for his team.

But what also cannot be discounted is that he did endure a season that went from bad to worse especially given the fact that the noted Finn scored race results such as nineteen, seventeen and fourteen in the opening three rounds of the recently-concluded season. That kind of start to his season may have likely been a tough pill to swallow.

However, where it got really worse for Valtteri Bottas was the fact that the driver, now well into mid-thirties scored four successive race results that were well out of the top fifteen on the grids. This happened from the onset of the Dutch Grand Prix until the Texas-bound COTA F1 race. It didn’t cut a rosy picture to note Valtteri Bottas’ race results being a P19 at Zandvoort, followed by P16 at Monza, and then another sixteenth at Azerbaijan, which was followed by an exact same race finish at Singapore. At COTA, he would further nosedive to a seventeenth.

On the whole, given the fact that of the thirteen in 24 F1 races that he drove in the past season, Valtteri Bottas finished outside the top-15 highlights just why he’s a bit lucky to get another chance at Mercedes.

That’s despite the very fact that in this new or second chance at the famed Woking-based outfit, Bottas’s role is that of a reserve driver.

Even when the car is pretty weak (which was clearly the case with Bottas), it ought to be argued- but isn’t- you have to try hard and score, if not more, a couple of races in points.

But no. At the end of the day, Valtteri Bottas presided over an absolute point draught in 2024. He scored no points whatsoever coming as close as eleventh at Qatar, a hard-fought race for the talented Finnish driver, who has had previous stints with outfits such as Williams.

On the other hand, you got to feel a bit sad for someone like Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu who scored some points whatsoever and the only in fact that his despicably out of sorts Visa Cash App team managed and yet found himself no seat whatsoever in the same team for the next season.

And then there’s the Nastola-born driver who is once again with the Mercedes outfit under the kind guidance of Team principal Toto Wolff.

Having said that, here is a case in point.

While there’s little doubt about Bottas’s abilities as a driver, he is after all, a 10-time race winner, what does cast a bit of doubt about his overall performances over the past many seasons in the sport is that despite being armed with a championship-winning car for no fewer than half-a-decade, all that Bottas managed (as on date) are ten race wins.

Yet, at the same time and driving the same car albeit with some setting changes was a certain Sir Lewis Hamilton who claimed the 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 drivers’ championship with Bottas being his teammate. While surely, that makes Lewis one of a kind and he most certainly is, but then you wonder, if Hamilton had the same racier and punchier car, why couldn’t Bottas go onto claim a title, at least once, if not more?

Rosberg proved that he was more than a second-rate driver by beating Lewis Hamilton cleanly and fairly in 2016. Valtteri Bottas, who must consider himself lucky to still have a role at the very team that enabled him to capture 58 of his 67 F1 podiums, failed to stand on the very top step of the drivers’s title podium even once.

Certainly, the Finn has the caliber and the experience but going by his recent F1 achievement, which boils down to a new stint with Mercedes, he’s also armed with some charming luck. This is with due sincerity to the simple and uncomplicated man he is.