– “I can honestly say that I am happier in 2026 than ever before.” With this sentence in a very personal contribution for The Players’ Tribune, Valtteri Bottas certainly surprises a bit, because purely sportingly the Finn is currently driving at the very back of Formula 1 with his new employer Cadillac.
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The contrast to his time at Mercedes, when he won the Constructors’ World Championship five times in a row with the Silver Arrows between 2017 and 2021, could not be greater. The same applies to his emotional world – but exactly in the opposite direction.
Because although he regularly fought for wins with Mercedes back then, he could hardly have been unhappier at times. “I hated racing. In the winter break before the 2019 season, I didn’t think I would come back,” Bottas reveals.
He had previously finished the 2018 season without a Grand Prix win. Many fans especially remember the Russian Grand Prix, where Bottas had to make way for his teammate Lewis Hamilton on team orders.
“Do you know how much I would have loved to just say ‘No’?” admits the now 36-year-old. “But I had to be a good teammate. I let him through, and of course he had an incredible season.” Hamilton became world champion in the end, Bottas only fifth in the championship.
Bottas: Was just the “Wingman” for everyone
“It’s kind of strange, because Lewis and I are friends,” emphasizes Bottas, “but Formula 1 is such a crazy sport. On the one hand, we all want to destroy each other. We would do anything to improve our times by a millisecond. Anything to gain an advantage.”
“But sometimes your superiors tell you that it’s a team sport and you have to ease off and make way,” he explains. At the time, the public image of Bottas as the number 2 driver solidified. “He was the champion. I was the ‘Wingman’,” he recalls.
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Bottas owed this nickname precisely to Toto Wolff. “Bottas was a perfect wingman for Lewis,” said the team boss at the time after the Hungarian Grand Prix in an interview with ORF. Although Wolff later explained that he did not mean his statement in a derogatory way. But by then it had already taken on a life of its own.
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“To this day I have mixed feelings about it,” explains Bottas and adds: “I don’t know how to respond when people bring it up, because Lewis is an incredible driver and a friend. I hold no grudge against Mercedes, Toto or anyone else.”
“But the whole situation almost made me quit the sport,” says Bottas, who was “depressed and burned out.” “During that winter break I made the decision that I would retire,” the Finn recalls.
How the legendary Melbourne radio message was meant
In the end, however, he decided against it. “I told myself: ‘If you come back, then come back as the best driver on the grid,'” says Bottas, who then actually won the season opener in Melbourne 2019 after the winter break.
His subsequent radio message “To whom it may concern: Fuck you!” is legendary to this day. “I don’t regret saying that. But I’m not sure people really understood what I meant by it,” explains Bottas.
“For me, it didn’t even come from a place of bitterness anymore,” he emphasizes and explains: “It was almost as if I had said ‘Thank you’.” Although he did not win the world title in 2019 either, with four wins he was at least runner-up behind Hamilton.
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He drove for Mercedes until the end of 2021, then switched to Alfa Romeo. Since this season he has been racing for the new Cadillac team – and according to his own statement, he is not only happier than ever before, but also “the best driver I have ever been”.
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