Valtteri Bottas has revealed he nearly quit Formula 1 after being cast as Lewis Hamilton’s “wingman” at Mercedes in 2018.

The Finn, who now races for Cadillac, says he still has “complicated feelings about it”.

Valtteri Bottas nearly quit F1 over Lewis Hamilton role

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Bottas joined Mercedes in 2017, handed his big break by Wolff after Nico Rosberg’s shock retirement just days after the German beat Hamilton to the 2016 world title.

It didn’t turn out to be the dream move that he had expected.

Although he won 10 grands prix during his five seasons with the Brackley squad, Bottas was the number two to Hamilton.

From being called “a sensational wingman” for his team-mate when he was used to cover off the Ferraris at the Hungarian Grand Prix, to “Valtteri, it’s James” at the Russian GP, Bottas was ordered to move over or protect Hamilton at the expense of his own success.

Bottas spoke of his feelings at the time in an emotional column for the Players’ Tribune.

“First season was good,” he wrote. “I started the 2018 season thinking that I was the best driver on the grid, and that I was going to win the championship.

“……… Yeah. I didn’t win a single race.

“Ha.

“There were races that I could have won, but I was told to move over for my team-mate.

““Valtteri, let Lewis through.”

“Everybody has heard it by now.

“It’s funny, because Lewis and I are friends. But F1 is such a crazy sport. On one hand, we all want to crush one another. We would do anything to shave off a millisecond from our times. Anything to get an edge.

“But then sometimes, you are told by your bosses that it’s a team sport, and you should slow down and move aside.

“Do you know how badly I wanted to just say no? But I had to be a good team-mate. I let him through, and of course he had an incredible season.

“He was the champion.

“I was “the wingman”.

“To this day, I have complicated feelings about it. I don’t know how to answer when people ask me about it, because Lewis is an incredible driver and a friend. I have no bad blood with Mercedes or Toto or anyone. But the whole situation almost made me walk away from the sport.”

That he was all too often reminded of his unofficial status on social media didn’t help.

“The old me came back,” he continued. “The negative Valtteri. The obsessive Valtteri. I was reading too many comments on social media, and I started to become very self-loathing. (Finns have a special talent for this.) Thankfully, I had the tools from my experience in 2014 to understand what was happening, and I had plenty of support.

“But I have to be honest … I was definitely depressed and burnt out. I hated racing. During that winter break before the 2019 season, I did not think that I was going to come back.

“That winter break, I made the decision that I was going to retire.

“I just thought about all this stuff that I had put out of my mind for years. The sacrifices of my family, the fun times, the bad times…. Just everything.

“I don’t know why, but I had this epiphany. I realised that I was constantly looking in the rearview mirror, thinking about “What if?”

“I decided to only think about “What’s next?”

“I told myself, “If you’re coming back, you’re coming back as the best driver on the grid.”

“I walked out of those woods with a completely different mindset.”

Bottas returned to the grid in 2019 with Mercedes and won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix by 20.8s, and promptly told the world, “To whom it may concern, f*** you”.

“I don’t regret saying it,” he wrote, “but I’m not sure people really understood what I meant.

“For me, that wasn’t even coming from a place of bitterness anymore. It’s almost like I was saying, “Thank you”.”

Bottas left Mercedes to join Sauber in 2022 and spent three years with the team before returning to Mercedes as a reserve driver. He made his comeback onto the F1 grid at this year’s Australian Grand Prix, spearheading Cadillac’s new Formula 1 challenge.

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