Bottas almost quit F1: 'Was on the edge'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Valtteri Bottas admits in the Motor Sport Magazine Podcast admits that he was close to retiring from Formula One in 2018. The Finn just couldn't beat his teammate at the time, Lewis Hamilton, and as a result, he put too much pressure on himself.
Bottas was preparing for an extra year at Williams in 2017 at the end of 2016 when Nico Rosberg suddenly announced his retirement. The Finn was immediately picked up by Mercedes, becoming Hamilton's teammate. In 2017 Bottas won a few races, in 2018, not one. Hamilton became champion in both years, which caused Bottas to put an awful lot of pressure on himself.
Tough times from Bottas
"At the end of 2018, I almost stopped, it was so close. Just because of the fact that I couldn’t understand and take the fact that I couldn’t beat Lewis in those two years," Bottas said. In 2018, Bottas was given a supporting role in the final Grands Prix. He had a hard time dealing with that. So at the end of 2018, Bottas took a long break to focus on himself.
"The human mind is strange in a way that sometimes you go into dark places. You lose the joy in things and I just completely lost the joy of F1 and racing in F1. I was almost angry at F1," Bottas said. Eventually, Bottas found the joy again and he noticed the difference immediately. In 2019, he immediately won the very first Grand Prix of that year.