Valtteri Bottas is thriving at Alfa Romeo — but he almost quit F1 altogether in 2018

At the end of his second season as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate at Mercedes, Valtteri Bottas was ready to quit Formula One. His dream opportunity of driving the fastest car on the grid against the sport’s best driver had quickly turned into a nightmare and by the end of 2018 he was close to calling time on his career.

At the Russian Grand Prix in September that year, Bottas had been told by his Mercedes team to gift a near-certain victory to Hamilton. Bottas was leading the race on a circuit where he always seemed to have an advantage over Hamilton, when the now infamous “Valtteri, it’s James” radio message was sent by Mercedes’ chief strategist James Vowles to tell him to let his teammate past.

The view from the pit wall was that Hamilton had signs of damage on his front tyres and the best way to ensure a one-two victory ahead of Sebastian Vettel in third place was to swap the drivers so that Bottas could defend from the Ferrari. What’s more, a series of underwhelming results earlier in the year meant Bottas was already out of title contention, while Vettel was still a threat to Hamilton’s championship campaign. Bottas complied with the order but looked distraught when he joined Hamilton for the podium celebrations after the race.

Bottas finished the 2018 season 161 points adrift of Hamilton and was in fifth place in the standings behind both Ferrari drivers as well as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Once the racing had finished for the year, he went back to his native Finland and in the run up to New Year seriously calling Mercedes boss Toto Wolff to say he was quitting the sport.

“I never physically held the phone in my hand with Toto’s number on it, so I didn’t get that close, but still it was a tough New Year. I couldn’t decide,” he told ESPN in a recent interview.

“With the headspace that I got myself into — not accepting to be in a support role and all these kind of things — it was quite difficult to deal with.”

Since the age of six when he first drove a go-kart, Bottas had been pursuing a career in F1 with the dream of winning races and, ultimately, challenging for the drivers’ championship. When he joined Mercedes in 2017 as Nico Rosberg’s replacement it appeared as though that goal might finally be within reach, but in the space of two years he put so much pressure on himself to achieve it that he was no longer enjoying the sport.

“I was angry at myself, because obviously if I had more points than Lewis by the half point of the season I wouldn’t have been…