The only thing Valtteri Bottas needs is a competitive car, dammit!

First of all, let me make it clear that I am an unabashed Valtteri Bottas fan. I love Formula 1 and I like many of the racers, but for whatever reason, Bottas is my favorite. 

Currently, he is the lead driver for Sauber, also known as Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber, which is also, currently, the worst of Formula 1's ten teams. But, being the worst team is not perpetual, especially among the midfield teams. At the start of this very season, in fact, it clearly looked like Alpine would be the 2024 season's worst team after the first few races. They are still only in 8th place in the Constructor's Standings after finishing 2023 in 6th. In that season, however, they were a dominant 6th, as they were clear of 7th place by a whopping 92 points, a margin not much smaller than the 129 points separating 2nd place finisher Mercedes and fifth place Aston Martin, in the 2023 season, which was completely dominated by Max Verstappen and Red Bull, who finished 451 points ahead of Mercedes.

In a strictly technical sense, there are two driver seats remaining to be filled for the 2025 season, now that F2 phenom Kimi Antonelli has finally been signed by Mercedes, but there is really only one seat remaining because, in reality, the open seat for VCARB, the Red Bull sister team, will be filled by either current driver Daniel Ricciardo, Sergio Perez (if he gets demoted) or Liam Lawson, a Red Bull Academy and current F2 driver. So that is three drivers for potential two Red Bull spots or two drivers for one, however you want to view it. Which REALLY means there is only one open seat for 2025.

And that seat currently either belongs to Bottas or, much more unlikely, to his Sauber teammate, Zhou Guanyu (not anymore - see below) for the remainder of 2024. Current Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg has already signed for one Sauber spot going forward, as both Bottas and Zhou's contracts are up at the end of the current season. And while the speculation is rampant, I feel that Bottas has the inside track for the seat. But many other names have been mentioned, including former F1 driver Mick Schumacher, F2 driver Gabriel Bortoleto or even a Red Bull loan of Lawson for a season if he doesn't end up at VCARB or Red Bull.

2025 will be a season with a lot of changes already in store, especially with rookie drivers making the jump up. Already, Oliver Bearman and Jack Doohan and have secured seats at Haas and Alpine, respectively. Esteban Ocon is moving to Haas from Alpine, ostensibly replacing Hulkenberg and Bearman will team with him as Kevin Magnussen isn't being re-signed. Doohan is taking Ocon's vacated Alpine seat. Add in Antonelli and potentially Lawson and the grid might have rookies in a fifth of the seats. Logan Sargeant and Magnussen are already gone, Zhou most likely will be gone and Bottas or Ricciardo could potentially be casualties, as well.

With all of that being said, I am here to make the case for Bottas being the man who remains in the Sauber seat versus the potential alternatives.

Formula One teams are in a constant state of development. The season begins with a starting car design, tested extensively before the first race of the season. Much of that design has been hashed out during the previous season and then built during the off season. Once the races begin in earnest, the cars are continuously upgraded with new design parts that have been created as new data has come in regarding the current car's performance during those races, simulator work and regular testing sessions in between races. Sometimes the upgrades are specific to future races to match the cars better to the idiosyncrasies of a particular track and even sometimes to suit each of a team's particular drivers. The cars are not, in other words, identical. Obviously, this is all heavily regulated through the F1 rules and VERY obviously, the upgrades are designed to improve the competitive viability of the cars.

Unfortunately, despite all of those "obviouslies" in the last paragraph, these upgrades are sometimes not successful. Or, they are successful, but not as much as those upgrades other teams have brought to the table. Which, in referring to the second paragraph I wrote above, is why a team may look terrible in the first few races of a season and then catch fire. McLaren are currently on just such a streak. During the first 8 races of 2023, the Papaya squad scored a measly 17 points in total. Then, an upgrade for the race in Austria netted a further 12 points, with Lando Norris finishing 4th. Then, he and teammate Oscar Piastri finished 2nd and 4th at Silverstone, doubling the team points total to 59, and McLaren took off from there, finishing with a season total of 302 points and passing early season darlings Aston Martin, whose upgrades were not as successful. 

Fast forward to 2024 and Norris and Piastri have both netted their first career wins (Norris, twice) and McLaren is threatening to take the Constructor's Championship from Red Bull, who themselves are coming off one of the most dominant seasons in Formula One history.

So why all the babble about upgrades? Because I have heard Bottas be described as "distracted" or "unmotivated" in trying to explain why he shouldn't be retained. Bottas clearly wants to stay in F1 and would be thrilled to retain the seat at Sauber, even while being fully aware of just how poor the team is performing overall. Valtteri Bottas is neither "distracted" or "unmotivated" and is, in fact, a damn good F1 driver. All VB needs is a decent, competitive car. 

The 2021 season was the fifth and final season for Bottas with Mercedes as second driver and foil to Lewis Hamilton for 4 of his championship seasons. Bottas finished 3rd in the Driver Standings for that season, with a total of 226 points and one race win as Max Verstappen broke Hamilton's streak of four consecutive driver championships. Considering that Mercedes still won the Constructor's Championship, and the fact that Hamilton and Verstappen collected all of the wins that season except for the one each that Bottas, Ricciardo, Ocon and Perez had, makes a decent argument that Bottas could be considered the true third best driver that season.

So that same 3rd best driver from 2021, Valtteri Bottas, goes into 2022 with a new 3-year deal with Alfa Romeo/Sauber and blasts out of the gate in largely the same form as he had during 2021. In the first nine races in 2022, Bottas had 7 points finishes for a total of 46 points, finishing in an average of 8th place per race versus his new, rookie teammate's 15th place average. The other two races for VB were a DNF in Saudi Arabia and an 11th place finish in Baku. Those 46 points were all but 3 of the total for the team up to that point, or 94%. 

But more telling was that through those first nine races (41% of the season), Alfa/Sauber had scored a whopping 89% of the total points they would achieve for the entire 2022 season. Alpha Tauri had also scored a vast haul of their points by that time, as well, with 27 of their total of 35 for 2021. And it is worth noting that the Sauber/Alfa wasn't exactly a world beater in 2021, with Kimi Raikkonen (in his final F1 season), Antonio Giovanazzi and Robert Kubica, who substituted for 2 races, amassing a total of 13 points for that entire season in the car. So, the new C42 car they started 2022 with was a much better car to begin with until the upgrades started rolling in.

What all this means to me is that the off-season car development between the '21 and '22 seasons, with both the Alfa/Sauber and the Alpha Tauri teams outstripping the work of the other 5 teams that finished 2021 outside of the top 3 on the grid with them. That top 3 were definitely off in their own world in 2022, considering that 3rd place Mercedes essentially had 3 times as many points as 4th place finisher Alpine. 

Alfa and Alpha might have won that off-season, but starting at race 10 of 2021, Alfa Romeo/Sauber has basically had their hats handed to them for two plus seasons worth of races in the car and the upgrade development scheme of things. Over a span of 50 races, starting at Silverstone in 2022 through last weekend at Zandvoort, Sauber has scored a total of 22 points (none of them in 2024, by the way), an average of less than a half of a point per race, which basically means an average finish of 10th in one of the two cars in every other race. And, stating it that way actually makes it look more reasonable than it has been in reality, because they have only had, as a team, 10 points finishes in those 50 races between 2 drivers, which really equates to 100 driver races. So, they have managed to score in only 1/10th of the races they have participated in, in six races for Bottas and four for Zhou.

At this point, I am going to make a supposition, which is based a little bit on the Red Bull team of the last few years. That supposition is that the better the car, the easier it is to judge the talent difference of the drivers who drive that car. Sergio Perez, the 2nd driver at Red Bull, is an above-average driver, with 39 podiums and six victories in his 13 seasons. But, compared to his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen, the talent difference is clear. As the McLaren car has gotten better in the last year (over 2 seasons), the talent gap between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, which is not huge has made itself a little clearer, with Lando appearing to be a little bit better of a driver, although they are clearly, together, one of the best driver tandems in the sport.

So, based on that supposition, it seems that when the Sauber car was competitive in the first half of 2022, Bottas was clearly better than Zhou. Even in consideration of Zhou's status as a rookie driver that season. As the car has been less competitive, the difference between them in terms of talent looks smaller on the surface. That said, however, when you compare their statistics over all of the competitive opportunities, which are Races, Qualifying sessions, Sprint Races and Sprint Qualifying sessions, Bottas actually dominates his teammate.

In their three years together, Zhou and Bottas have had 74 competitive opportunities, of which Zhou has bettered Bottas only 21 times. The qualifying, in particular, has an interesting tale to tell, especially of late. In 2024, Bottas has had an average Qualifying spot of 15th (14.86) and Zhou's average has been 18th (18.20), which has actually been the biggest split of their entire time as teammates, outside of those first 9 races of 2022 when the split was 9th to 15th between them.

I know that this is a bit of the "it's not you, it's me" framing of an argument, but in the case of Valtteri Bottas, it is definitely the team and not him. Since race 10 of 2022, there have been few bright spots for Alfa/Sauber. The high-water marks for the team have been dismal, with Zhou getting his highest ever qualifying result, 5th and Bottas qualifying 7th for the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix. As for the races themselves, Bottas and Zhou finished 8th and 9th respectively at Qatar the same year. 

Beyond that, it has been a litany of slow one lap pace in qualifying and slow overall pace on race days. And it has been getting worse this season. In only 8 times in 30 chances has either one of the Sauber drivers made Q2, meaning they were not eliminated in the first of the three qualifying sessions there are at each race. Bottas has been responsible for all of those except two. They also both made Q3 for the Sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix, the only Q3 appearances of the season besides Bottas' qualifying 10th at the same grand prix.

By comparison to the current season, 2023 was much better with 16 points (10 Bottas, 6 Zhou) and points finishes in 7 races including those 8th and 9th place finishes at Qatar (Bottas: Alfa Romeo ‘finally understand upgrades’ after Qatar – Motorsport Week). Bottas also made it past Q1 at 14 of the 22 races, with Zhou making it in 7 out of 22, also. Q3 was made 7 times, with Bottas collecting 5 of those appearances. Sprint qualifying, which took place at 6 venues, added a further five Q2 appearances, one of which was a Q3, again at Qatar. The sprints provided no race points, however, but Alfa Sauber's total of 16 that year was enough to put them ahead of Haas for the season, at least.

Ultimately, the thing that becomes clear is that even with the worst car on the grid over a period of two plus years, Bottas has clearly outpaced his teammate. He is still a top half of the midfield driver, talent wise. Maybe better, but it is hard to tell with the equipment he is driving. Surely, almost all of the drivers at the top 4 teams, with the exception of Perez, are better than Bottas, but I wouldn't say that many of the other drivers on the grid are clearly better than him at this point, except for Albon and possibly Alonso. Would Ocon, Stroll (whom I secretly kind of think is a better driver than most people think) or Tsunoda have done any better in 2024 clad in Sauber black and dayglo green? I doubt it and let's not forget that Bottas was the third best driver on the grid just 3 seasons ago when he had a Mercedes to drive. 

At this point, as another race week has gone by since I started this blog and it has now been unofficially confirmed that Zhou will not be being re-signed by Sauber. Some speculate that because another older driver, Nico Hulkenberg, was already signed earlier this year by the team, that Sauber may want to go the rookie driver route for the other seat, but I think it would behoove them to pair Nico with Bottas. Haas have steadily improved since 2021 by first adding one older driver, Magnussen, in 2022 and then pairing him with the Hulk, who is even older, for the last two years, in which they have stabilized the team and improved, all the way from zero points in 2021 up to fighting for sixth with VCARB this season. Of course, the fact that Gabriel Bortoleto just won the F2 race this weekend at Monza from last on the grid may make the decision to NOT sign him more difficult. 

Ultimately what I believe is that Sauber needs as they transition into the Audi works team for 2026 are drivers who have already been through their learning processes in the past (not that one doesn't always learn!) in order to guide the construction reset under new hires Mattia Binotto, Jonathan Wheatley and Stefano Sordo, (Sauber Hires Former Ferrari Lead Mattia Binotto to Run Audi F1 (roadandtrack.com)) who will be leading the technical and management side of things. Zhou Guanyu was deserving of a Formula One seat, but Sauber missed out with him on valuable driver insight to help point the technical developments in a direction from one of its seats by not having an experienced driver instead. Now, if they will rehire Bottas, they will have two experienced drivers to add to the knowledge base.