EXCLUSIVE: ‘I know I should be in F1’ – Valtteri Bottas’s big plan to stay on the grid for 2025

There’s a steely look in Valtteri Bottas’s eyes as we sit opposite each other in Kick Sauber’s motorhome at the Baku City Circuit.

Bottas has just, in efficiently brusque tones, asked in a voicenote for his breakfast to be brought down to him – apologising to me that he’d got his scheduling wrong and checking I wouldn’t mind if he ate and talked at the same time. Well, who am I to keep an F1 driver from his brekkie?

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Bottas looks like a man who means business, rather than one losing sleep over where his future lies. His current squad, Kick Sauber – set to become the Audi works team in 2026 – are one of just two operations on the grid yet to announce their driver line-up for next year (RB are the other).

Current Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg has been signed up for next year, returning to the squad he drove a single season with in 2013. The wait, however, for Bottas, his incumbent team mate Zhou Guanyu, plus various other names linked to the project – some known, established F1 race winners, some promising junior hopefuls – goes on.

The day before our interview, however, in the Thursday media pen in Baku, Bottas had sounded positive, bordering on cocky, about his chances of remaining in the sport. His focus, he said, was fully on F1. A journalist’s question on alternatives revealed that he’d considered a switch to IndyCar, but that pathway was looking less and less like something he’d be thinking about – or needing to think about…

“I think for me, it’s very clear where I want to be and where I most likely will be, which is in Formula 1,” Bottas told the journalist. “Let’s say if it’s a hypothetical question of ‘if not Formula 1’, I would definitely race. I’m a racer, I’ve been racing all my life and I couldn’t just quit racing. Plan B would be IndyCar, try and win the championship in x amount of years – but I don’t think that’s yet.”

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By Friday morning, he’s perhaps measuring his words a little more carefully when I ask him where that confidence over his future was coming from.

“I think the confidence probably is from my side,” he says. “I know that I should be in Formula 1 and based on just how positive, let's say, the feedback I've got from Mattia and his intentions for the future, I feel like I'm in a strong position. But still… it's too early really to say much more than that.”

Mattia is Mattia Binotto, Ferrari’s former Team Principal, who after 18 months out of the sport, joined Kick Sauber/Audi as Chief Operating and Chief Technical Officer, beginning work on August 1 for a team still yet to score a point in 2024.

That move was mirrored by the departure of former McLaren Team Principal Andreas Seidl – believed to have been a key champion in the decision to sign Hulkenberg onto the project – along with General Representative Oliver Hoffmann. That top-level re-shuffle, it seems, has brought about a change in Bottas’s feeling of security within the squad.

“It did feel for the last six months or so that I wasn’t the top priority,” Bottas told the media back in Zandvoort. “Obviously there was one signing [Hulkenberg] before me, and obviously the team and the management were looking for all the options, with sometimes quite little communication.”

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That “little communication” had led to the relationship between Sauber and Bottas appearing strained at points earlier in the year – most notably in Miami, where Bottas felt a new race engineer had been foisted upon him.

“It’s quite a sudden change,” he bristled in Florida when asked about the change. “Many of those decisions, they are not in my hands… I don't do those decisions.”

But the partnership seems on a far more even keel in as we chat in Baku about his current outlook.

“I would say earlier this year, I was in a situation that I had to look at all the options, because you just don't know how the pieces will go together,” Bottas tells me. “But now for me, it's really clear what I want. It is only Formula 1, and [the same] for the years ahead. That's now what I'm going to focus all my energy on instead of looking at this point somewhere else.

READ MORE: Filling Kick Sauber's second seat is a 'top priority' for Binotto – who are they eyeing up?

“With Mattia, when he joined, we met up pretty quickly. I have lots of respect for him, and I could see that he's got respect for me as well. And you know, we've been opponents in the past when I was at Mercedes, when he was at Ferrari, and I was giving a hard time to them. So he knows that it's better to have me in his side than against!”

He adds: “I think in the situation where we are now, the team needs experience, and that's what I… if I was boss, I would take experience, because to get out of the situation, you need somebody who's been in a team that has won, who knows what actually a team needs to succeed in terms of factory, in terms of people, in terms of way of working. So that's why I think I'm in a good position.”

It's undeniable that 2024-spec Valtteri Bottas cuts a much more relaxed figure than the sometimes wounded, defensive Mercedes driver who railed – as much as mild-mannered Finns ever can rail – at having to go cap-in-hand to Toto Wolff for one-year contract extensions when he was partnered with Lewis Hamilton at the Silver Arrows.

Joining Sauber for 2022 saw Bottas given contract stability over multiple seasons, and a clear ‘team leader’ status, trinkets he was never afforded at Mercedes. And it’s this, he says, that’s allowed him to feel more comfortable in his own skin than he ever did as the clean-shaven Robin to Hamilton’s Batman at Mercedes.

READ MORE: Coffee and cycling addictions, music with Hamilton and mystery gifts – Getting to know the real Valtteri Bottas

“One big thing is age, experience,” he says of his more relaxed demeanour these days – his bleached blonde mullet poking out from the back of his lurid green and black Kick Sauber cap.

“But then obviously I had the change of atmosphere [from Mercedes to Sauber]. For the first time in the sport, I had stability in terms of contract situation. And pretty much at the same time, or just before, a new partner from Australia [his pro cyclist girlfriend Tiffany Cromwell].

“I think all these things just allowed me to not take some things in life too seriously and see the bigger picture of the life, instead of just being in a bit of a shell.”

It’s that more worldly approach, according to Bottas – still managed by his childhood hero Mika Hakkinen, along with Belgian businessman Didier Coton – that also allows him to be more relaxed as he waits for a decision on his future to be made.

F1 ICONS: Bottas on fellow Finn and double world champion Mika Hakkinen

“I think the more you've been in that situation, you just kind of learn to deal with it,” he says. “It becomes, let's say, less personal and less distracting. I think it's just the experience.

“When you've done certain things many times, then it's like, ‘Okay, here we go again.’ But also, I feel like sometimes things happen for a reason – so if something wasn't meant to be, then there's always something else, you know? There's so many things to do in in this world and life, that that's why probably with certain things, I'm not too stressed.”

Who knows, then, what the future holds for Valtteri Bottas. As the Finn says, there’s plenty for the 35-year-old to be getting on with outside of the F1 paddock, be that promoting his own brand of gin, his red wine – made in collaboration with sixth-generation Australian producer Corrina Wright – or riding his impressive collection of road bikes.

Speaking to him, though, it’s clear that Bottas doesn’t feel ready to cycle off into the sunset just yet…

“I feel like I've got many years ahead,” he says. “I don't feel any signs of degradation.

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“Every year, I always just feel like I learn something new and become a more complete driver. And there's not a single area I can say that I've gone backwards since the beginning. So that's why I think I still have lots of time, and [lots] to give for the sport.

“I've always had the confidence that there will be somebody in the paddock who knows what I can give to the team and knows my skill, and I hope and trust that that is the case, you know,” he concludes. “And if not, then… that's their loss.”