mobile app bar

“Whether it’s a race or qualifying, I’m unbeatable” – Valtteri Bottas believes on his best days he can be unbeatable but those days are too rare

Samriddhi Jaiswal
Published

"Whether it’s a race or qualifying, I’m unbeatable" - Valtteri Bottas believes on his best days he can be unbeatable but those days are too rare

Looking back on his time with Mercedes, Valtteri Bottas believes that he can be unbeatable on his best days on the field.

The Finnish racing driver has spent five seasons with the Mercedes teams and has led it to five Constructors’ Championships. However, he could never manage to create a solid ground for battling the drivers’ championship.

Bottas only won 10 races in the past five years and felt that he needed to be at his best all the time which he could not manage to do as much as he wanted to.

The Finn believes that luck played a crucial role in the final outcome of his title battles. “I honestly feel like on my best days, whether it’s a race or qualifying, I’m unbeatable. But unfortunately, I don’t always have the best days,” he told The Race.

“I can’t say that I exceeded any of my expectations. I have pretty high expectations for myself, personally. Maybe a bit too high.”

He said that the beginning of this season was pretty much a disaster with all the crashes and what felt to him like endless engine penalties. “It just wasn’t quite meant to be so far,” he said.

But I have to say in the five years, there’ve been moments that I don’t know if I should cry or laugh about my luck because I don’t really feel like I’ve been the luckiest driver with many things,” he further explained.

Also Read: Alex Albon speaks about his role in helping Max Verstappen win the World Championship

Valtteri Bottas admitted it was not simple alongside Hamilton

Bottas said that his performances did not exceed his expectations and at the same time were cloaked with Hamilton’s sheer pace and consistency.

Lewis Hamilton won four out of five drivers’ championships riding alongside his Finnish teammate. Bottas said, “I can’t say I exceeded anything. Where I feel like I failed, obviously I didn’t manage to win the Drivers’ Championship. But it wasn’t simple alongside Lewis. He always got the upper hand.”

“I feel like the ones who know about the sport and who follow the sport, they definitely acknowledge that I can be pretty fast on my day. The baseline level as a driver like Lewis is so high that it is quite tricky to outperform him all the time.”

“It’s a very mental sport and I think a strength of Lewis is the consistency and rarely having any off weekends in terms of performance. If it varies it’s only marginal,” he concluded.

Also Read: Sebastian Vettel on Valtteri Bottas leaving Silver Arrows

About the author

Samriddhi Jaiswal

Samriddhi Jaiswal

x-iconinstagram-iconlinkedin-icon

Samriddhi Jaiswal is an F1 editor and writer at The SportsRush. She started her career as a business journalist but soon found her calling in lights out here we go! Samriddhi has been a Ferrari fan even when her interaction with F1 was occasional. Her first real experience with the thrilling sport came when Charles Leclerc clinched his iconic victory in Spa and Monza and painted the track red. Now, a Tifosi, Samriddhi is a hardcore fan of the prancing horse and can relate to the chaos within the Italian camp and also admires Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher. Off the track, she finds her home in books and musical instruments.

Share this article