Few things invigorate the Formula 1 fanbase more than an exciting young prospect being announced to be joining the grid for the upcoming season.
As if the confirmations that Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Oliver Bearman and Jack Doohan were not enough, Sauber became the latest team to offer an opportunity to a rookie in 2025 when they announced McLaren development driver and current Formula 2 championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto will be granted their second seat.
But Bortoleto’s arrival on the scene means both of the team’s current drivers – Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu – will be off the grid next season. Zhou’s tenure in the sport after three seasons may not have prompted much outrage from F1’s core fans, who largely feel China’s first F1 driver has reached the end of his natural lifespan in the sport. But several RaceFans readers expressed their sympathies for Bottas appearing to be out of luck at the end of his 13th world championship season.
After Sauber could not find a way inside the top ten during last weekend’s wet and wild Brazilian Grand Prix, it’s difficult to see the team getting any opportunities to score a point before the end of the season barring some kind of chaotic race. So it’s now nearly inevitable that Bottas will finish the season as the 23rd placed driver in the championship.
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It will be easily Bottas’s worst season in his grand prix career, even less successful than his debut campaign in an especially uncompetitive Williams in 2013, where only an eighth place in the penultimate round in the United States saved him from going scoreless. With a best finish of 13th over the first 21 rounds of the season so far – something that even Logan Sargeant can boast a superior record to despite not having raced in the series since August – only a point can prevent Bottas from the ignominy of being the last placed driver in the championship.
Glancing at the results alone, it’s easy to assume that Bottas has been mediocre at best, unable to overcome the poor performance of his car. However, that is an unkind assessment of the fourth-most experienced driver on the current grid behind Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez.
For one thing, the 2024 Sauber is an especially poor car relative to its rivals in the field. Over the 21 Q1 sessions held this year so far, the C44 has been an average of 1.16% from the fastest time – a margin that is hardly poor…
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