Valtteri Bottas Must Rediscover 2014 Form to Boost Formula 1 Career Momentum
This should have been a breakthrough season in the career of Valtteri Bottas.
After claiming six podiums over the course of the 2014 campaign, beating world champions Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso to fourth place in the drivers' standings and establishing himself as Williams' most dependable performer, he was ready to take the next step.
With Williams' FW37 chassis retaining many of the traits that allowed the team to secure their first top-three constructors' championship finish in 11 years, Bottas stood a strong chance of becoming 2015's answer to Daniel Ricciardo, emerging as Mercedes' main menace and potentially snatching a victory or three.
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The uncertain futures of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen, who were embarking upon the final years of their respective contracts at Mercedes and Ferrari, attached extra significance to Bottas' campaign, meaning the right result at the right time could have seen him graduate to the very tip of the grid.
Indeed, in an era when drivers, with increasing regularity, are picking which teams they will drive for the following season—rather than vice versa—Bottas could have had the luxury, the privilege, the honour of being able to choose between the three fastest cars in Formula One for 2016.
Yet when he should have cemented his name alongside the likes of Vettel, Hamilton and Raikkonen, the 26-year-old Bottas has been unable to shrug off Felipe Massa, his 34-year-old team-mate.
After the first 12 rounds of the year, Bottas lies sixth in the drivers' championship, six points behind Massa, whom he led by 70 points at the same stage in 2014.
Although the difference between the Williams drivers must be viewed in the context of Bottas' early-season back injury, which ruled him out of the Australian Grand Prix and left him short of fitness until his fourth-place finish in April's Bahrain Grand Prix, the results in recent months have been telling.
Massa has beaten his team-mate in each of the last five races between the Austrian and Italian grands prix, and although Bottas has suffered bad luck during that period—a puncture dropped him from sixth to 13th in Hungary, while a drive-through penalty for Williams' pit-stop blunder in Belgium—the Brazilian's form has had a damaging effect on the Finn's career prospects.
While the news of Hamilton's contract extension with Mercedes on the eve of May's Monaco Grand Prix came as no surprise, ending Bottas' already slim hopes of succeeding the reigning world champion, his chances of replacing Raikkonen at Ferrari appeared to be far more promising.
But Ferrari's decision to retain Raikkonen ahead of the Belgian GP came after BBC Sport's Andrew Benson claimed the Prancing Horse's interest in Bottas had "waned."
Not because Raikkonen is the faster driver or due to his healthy relationship with Vettel—although that, as we noted ahead of his contract renewal, surely played a part—but because Bottas was "struggling this year to outpace" Massa, whom Ferrari released at the end of 2013 after four years spent walking the plank.
And Bottas, having appeared to have the top two teams in the business scrambling for his services at one stage, was left with only one option, and Williams confirmed the retention of their two drivers ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.
Had events played out differently, that weekend would have offered Bottas an initial glimpse of what it means to be a Ferrari driver at Monza, but it instead highlighted just how his reputation has been hurt.
The Williams drivers were evenly matched in Italy, qualifying just 0.187 seconds apart and crossing the finish line within 0.361 seconds of one another, per the official F1 website.
Yet the very fact it was Massa who found the extra performance when it mattered most to claim fifth on the grid and third place in the race—his second and the team's third podium finish of 2015—meant it was arguably the most damning result yet for Bottas.
According to F1 journalist Peter Windsor, Bottas was "very annoyed" after qualifying, having being denied the chance to benefit from Massa's tow on Monza's long straights, and the Finn's frustration is becoming increasingly obvious.
Where he would once adopt the persona of a team spokesman—see, for instance, his comments to Autosport's Ben Anderson and Ian Parkes following the British GP, where he spoke of learning curves and "how it is easy to say afterwards" that Williams made poor strategy calls—Bottas has become more openly critical of his employers.
After his mechanics fitted the wrong tyres to his car at Spa-Francorchamps, he told Autosport's Anderson and Lawrence Barretto the team "can't afford mistakes like this," adding they "should have got more points than what we did" even with a penalty, before telling the team's official website how he "expected more" from Williams in 2015.
All of this backs Windsor's suggestion that Bottas has "possibly become a little bit too much of a professional Formula One driver and not a racing driver" and lost his identity, that the characteristics that made him so compelling to watch a year ago have somehow been blunted.
While Williams may be accused of failing to make notable improvements from last season to this year, there is an argument that Bottas' own development has stalled.
His mistake on the first lap at Silverstone, after all—where, having passed Hamilton, Bottas almost seemed to forget to defend the inside line at the following corner, allowing the Mercedes driver to reclaim second place with ease—was as clumsy as his brush with the wall in last year's Australian GP and his error in Q3 when pole position was up for grabs in Austria.
The FW37's tendency to understeer has undoubtedly played into the hands of Massa, who has not only rediscovered his confidence and consistency, but, as Williams head of performance engineering Rob Smedley told Autosport's Barretto, is "definitely" performing as well as he did in 2008, when he came within a point of the championship.
The man who very nearly became king, however, is currently too close for comfort for someone who has been regarded as a future world champion since his arrival in F1 in 2013.
Bottas' links to Mercedes—Toto Wolff, the Silver Arrows' executive director, is a member of his management team—means he is likely to secure a championship-winning seat in the coming years with either the German manufacturer or Ferrari, should they come calling upon the 35-year-old Raikkonen's eventual exit.
The first rule of F1, though, is to beat your team-mate, and Bottas should bear that in mind before allowing himself to dream of bigger and better things.
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