Valtteri Bottas has revealed how being reduced to Lewis Hamilton’s ‘wingman’ led to him suffering from depression and wanting to walk away from Formula One.
Bottas spent five seasons at Mercedes from 2017 to 2021, with the Finnish driver having moved from Williams to partner Hamilton.
He finished third in Drivers’ Championship during his debut season with the team, as Hamilton earned a fourth world title ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
Bottas has reflected that he began the 2018 season feeling he was the best driver on the grid and would win the world title.
He admitted to his disappointment during the season, in which he did not win a race, after being asked by Mercedes to move aside to allow Hamilton through on multiple occasions.
One of the most notable incidents came at the Hungarian Grand Prix, when Mercedes principal Toto Wolff had hailed Bottas as a ‘sensational wingman’ after he held off Ferrari to help Hamilton earn victory.
Valtteri Bottas, right, revealed he fell into depression and nearly quit F1 after becoming the ‘wingman’ to seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton
Bottas had been Hamilton’s team-mate for five years at Mercedes, but stated that he ‘hated racing’ in 2018 after having to pass up chances of winning to allow the Briton to pass
Bottas said afterwards that he had been hurt by the comments, leading to Wolff clarifying his remarks and insisting Mercedes did not favour one driver over the other.
Hamilton would go on to clinch a fifth world title, while Bottas finished the season in fifth place.
‘Do you know how badly I wanted to just say no? But I had to be a good teammate. I let him through, and of course he had an incredible season,’ Bottas wrote in the Players’ Tribune.
‘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.
‘The old me came back. 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.’
Bottas revealed his time back in Finland led to him changing his mindset, placing a focus on looking forward in a positive way and trying to become the best driver on the grid.
Bottas, who now drives for Cadillac, also opened up on suffering from an eating disorder earlier in his F1 career
He finished as runner-up to Hamilton in the next two seasons, before placing third in his final year at Mercedes.
Bottas, who has joined Cadillac for their debut season, also opened up on an eating disorder in the early part of his career.
After being advised to lose five kilograms by Williams amid concerns their 2014 car would be overweight, Bottas admitted to taking his diet too far as he ‘obsessed’ over losing weight to make the car faster.
Bottas compared himself to a ‘drug addict’ during that period, stating that while his body was in ‘starvation mode’ he had been satisfied his reflection had been ‘getting slimmer.’
‘I started having these intense foggy spells. Not full-blown panic attacks exactly, but whenever I was in a crowd, I would start to feel dizzy and just …., like I had to get out of there. I wanted to be alone, or in the car,’ Bottas said.
‘The strangest thing is that when I was on the grid, everything felt fine. I was driving very well. I was on the podium, smiling. Then I’d get home, and I looked like a ghost.’
‘It got so bad that I actually started having heart palpitations when I was working out, and my coach knew something was wrong.’
Bottas admitted that he had been ‘in denial for so long’ over the issue, but eventually decided to see a psychologist and acknowledged it took him a further two years to feel like himself again.
