“I’m Driving Better Than I Did at Mercedes”: Valtteri Bottas Speaks About His F1 Future

Sauber and VCARB are the only two seats still vacant for the 2025 F1 season. With VCARB likely to select from the Red Bull drivers pool, Sauber seems as the only viable option for Valtteri Bottas. However, there have been increased reports of the Swiss team considering other options. With the uncertainty around his F1 future, Bottas reveals that he has been driving at his peak. 

Gabriel Bortoleto and Franco Colapinto have recently been linked to the Sauber (to be Audi) seat following their amazing form in the F2 and the F1 championships respectively. Mick Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel’s names have also come up to a lesser extent for an all-German lineup at Audi.

Bottas: “I feel like I’m driving better than I did at Mercedes, but it’s not showing”#SingaporeGP pic.twitter.com/ugDfgdeeXG

— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) September 19, 2024

Regardless, Bottas believes he deserves the Sauber seat and stated that the car is behind his lackluster 2024 season. The Finnish driver is currently last in the F1 standings with zero points to his name. In Singapore, Bottas was asked if he was performing at the same level as he did at Mercedes. 

The 35-year-old replied, “Yes, especially in qualifying this year, I haven’t felt any signs of being worse.” Bottas stated that he has only become better with more experience and gained consistency and confidence. He feels he can adapt to the car better at this stage of his career. But, owing to Sauber’s car performance he hasn’t been able to show the same.

“I feel actually I’m driving better than what I did at Mercedes, but obviously, it’s not that visible.”, he said.

Bottas went on to explain how it becomes increasingly difficult to measure a driver’s performance when the team is at the back of the grid. He mentioned that a comparison with the teammate is the only quantitative performance measure that backmarker teams have. 

Jacques Villeneuve highlights the issue with Sauber’s car

Speaking with Sky Sports F1 in Baku, Villeneuve pointed out how Sauber is always at the back of the grid in qualifying and the race. However, the 1997 world champion did explain that with the field being super close, they’re only a second or so behind the leaders, which isn’t far off. Villeneuve suggested that the Sauber car isn’t bad, but just hasn’t been upgraded enough.

Explaining the reasoning behind the lack of upgrades, he said, “They’re just surviving until Audi takes over. They don’t seem like they’re pushing much into the car. They’re not even trying to be that competitive, so, there’s not much to say there.”

As it is believed in F1, if one is not improving then they’re moving backward. Just like Red Bull, Sauber failed to bring any comprehensive upgrades that worked and has fallen to the dead end of the grid, not scoring a single point so far in 2024.