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Valtteri Bottas has been here before, toiling alongside an all-time great team-mate in Lewis Hamilton with no assurances about his Mercedes future. Yet despite the criticism, some legitimate, some overstated given the quality of his performances, Bottas has always prevailed and secured an extended stay with Formula 1’s pre-eminent team.
But what are his chances of convincing Mercedes for a fourth time to give him another year? Five races into this season, he has been more sideshow than main event, with Hamilton and Max Verstappen’s title fight monopolising the headlines. But Bottas is there precisely to be a support act, so with George Russell hammering at the door for his big Mercedes break, how strong a case has he made to be kept on?
As ever, Bottas’s qualifying performances have held up well. He’s beaten Hamilton twice in this season’s five qualifying sessions, notably taking pole position in Portugal, and on average he’s only around 0.1% points behind Hamilton. This is broadly in line with what we’ve seen from Bottas over the years with Mercedes, with his only truly bad Saturday coming at Imola where he couldn’t get the tyres working.
Conversely, he was much more effective at bringing the fronts in than Hamilton was at Monaco, more through the confidence he had behind the wheel than any set-up trickery. While it would have required delivering hitherto-unseen pace late in the lap at Monaco, it’s not entirely out of the question he might have been able to grab pole position.
Overall, given how strong a qualifier Hamilton is, with a mighty 100 pole positions to his name in F1, Bottas’s Saturday form remains a strong point. If his qualifying pace was good enough previously to warrant being retained then that box has again been ticked this year.
But race performances have always been the bigger question mark for Bottas. His strengths and weaknesses on Sunday are being tested more than ever this year given the sustained form of Red Bull, with his haul of 47 points over the first five races the worst of his five years with Mercedes. But that is distorted by his extraordinary retirement at Monaco and, to a far lesser extent, by his Imola blank after being collected by the spinning Russell.
Benchmarked against his opposite number (two) at Red Bull, Sergio Perez, Bottas is doing a better job. He’s scored more points than Perez and has more consistently been a factor in the battle at the front. While he has failed to take points off Verstappen this year, he has been a more consistent confounding factor strategically.
What’s more, while Portugal was a missed opportunity to defeat Verstappen, had Bottas not led with the Red Bull driver making a small error while battling to stay within DRS range of him, Hamilton might not have passed him. It’s also worth noting that Mercedes attempted to use Bottas in Bahrain to force Red Bull and Verstappen’s hand strategically, only for that plan to be frustrated by a bad pitstop.
Ranged against that is the fact that Bottas was always likely to be more valuable to Mercedes than Perez has been to Red Bull early in the season. The advantages of being in his fifth season with a team compared to a driver in his first five races cannot be overstated. So with as many as 18 races remaining this season, we’ve yet to see the Bottas v Perez battle truly play out.
Other aspects of Bottas’s Sunday game have been as expected. On several occasions, he’s lost ground behind leading midfielders after poor first laps, notably in Bahrain and Spain – as well as at Imola where he was buried in the midfield after a poor qualifying. He’s also struggled on occasions in varying conditions, for example in the race in Portugal.
But this will come as no surprise to Mercedes. Bottas has now contested 84 races for Mercedes, so it’s very well aware of his strengths and weaknesses. That he’s usually not as adaptable as Hamilton in tricky race conditions, or as accomplished a tyre manager, is nothing new.
And for all Bottas has stated his desire to be more selfish, as well as showing that willingness through costing Hamilton just over a second in his pursuit of Verstappen in Spain by not jumping out of the way at the first opportunity, he remains a valuable cog in the Mercedes machine.
Effectively, Bottas has made exactly the same case with his performances this year as he has in previous years. He’s not regressed, he’s not dramatically improved – he is the same driver and performs much the same role as he has always done.
This means that external factors will likely be the key in deciding whether he stays. The driver landscape he fits into at Mercedes currently is unique when compared to the previous situations he has prevailed in.
Firstly, the fact Hamilton’s future isn’t yet tied up means that the composition of the Mercedes line-up is entirely unclear. Hamilton has already indicated he’s keen to stay on and Mercedes should do everything it can to keep him. While team principal Toto Wolff has said Esteban Ocon is a contender, it’s understood that Mercedes isn’t seriously considering him.
So if that’s the case it comes down to the question of Bottas versus Russell.
Since Bottas last secured a new one-year stay, Russell has gained a key advantage. His outing in the Sakhir Grand Prix last year proved that he can cut it at the front of the F1 field. Yes, the Mercedes was dominant, but despite being unfamiliar with the car and not being comfortable within its confines, Russell came close to winning and only finished down in ninth place due to the bad luck of the puncture he suffered while seemingly on course to catch and pass Sergio Perez and complete his recovery from the pitstop disaster to take his maiden F1 win.
Given 23-year-old Russell is seen as the long-term future for the team, with the potential to be its leader post-Hamilton, there is a strong argument for promoting him next year. This is the fundamental question Mercedes must answer in making its choice for 2021.
Bottas works well alongside Hamilton, but if Russell is to be the long-term successor given Hamilton cannot go on forever, then the switch has to be made sooner rather than later. After all, if Mercedes were to stick with Bottas as long as Hamilton continues, it would be gambling on what happens in the year after that alliance ends.
For Bottas is not a driver Mercedes will be staking its long-term title-winning prospects on. And while there are still some question marks over Russell, he has a far higher potential upside that needs to be explored in a frontrunning car.
Bottas has done what he could realistically be expected to do, namely continue to operate at much the level Mercedes will have expected based on his past performances.
All Bottas can do is keep plugging away if he is to secure a new deal, assuming that’s his objective ahead of securing a move to another team. So far, he has been the driver Mercedes needs – much as he hates the term, as Hamilton’s “wingman”.
Bottas still is that driver, so it all comes down to whether Mercedes wants to continue with the same strategy or look to the longer-term.
