Valtteri Bottas’ shock quit revelation after being ‘fed up with F1 world’ in 2018

Feeling that Formula 1 was “just cruel to me”, Valtteri Bottas almost walked away at the end of 2018, but then came the “turning point”.

That was Bottas’ second season alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, which saw Hamilton secure his fifth World Championship title, while for Bottas , it was a P5 finish in the Drivers’ Championship with no race win achieved that season, which was almost his last.

Valtteri Bottas nearly quite F1 after 2018 season

Speaking on the Pitlane Life Lessons podcast , Bottas revealed that the 2018 campaign was almost the final straw for him, as he was “fed up with the F1 world” which just felt “cruel” to him.

But, he would return to the grid with Mercedes next season and went on to win the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, describing this as the “turning point” for his F1 career.

“There’s been many lessons in this sport,” said Bottas. “I’ve gone to a phase that I almost nearly quit my career, because I was fed up with the F1 world and I thought it was just cruel to me.

“That was end of 2018, but then somehow I managed to pick myself up and win the first race of ’19. So that was the turning point for me.”

Admitting that he has “not always done the best job” of controlling his emotions when frustrated, Bottas said he learned in that moment – where his F1 career nearly came to an end by his own choice – to take a step back and understand the bigger picture, a lesson which he continues to rely upon to this day.

Bottas departed Mercedes after the 2021 season, moving to current team Sauber.

“I think in the end, I just understood myself that sometimes you need time, sometimes you need to step back and really look at the big picture,” he said.

“And that’s what I actually quite often use nowadays in life, that if there’s a tiny little setback somewhere, I try to just take a step back, look at the big picture, that okay, things are actually quite okay, you know, I’ve got family, they’re healthy. I’m still driving a race car, what I love.

“So in the end, when you take a step back and look at the whole picture of life, that’s when normally you can put things into perspective, and maybe you start to complain less about certain things. So for me, it’s that, it’s staying away of being just in the F1 bubble. For me that’s been really important.”

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And it is safe to say that F1 2024 has brought about fresh challenging times for Bottas to deal with, Sauber the only team yet to score a point this season.

But as the veteran presence at Sauber on the driver front, Bottas sees self-honesty as the best policy and will always look to lend support to his Sauber team-mates where he can, stressing that “no one is a machine” and “people need support” when mistakes have been made.

Asked how he goes about picking people back up around him after a setback, Bottas replied: “It’s all about being self-honest, if you’re speaking about picking yourself up.

“It’s understanding what’s gone wrong, being super honest if actually there’s something that you could have done differently, whether it’s at that moment when, let’s say, a mistake or a disappointment happened, or something from the past.

“First of all, for me, it’s always understanding the issue and then honestly within yourself, processing it and making a plan for the future. ‘Okay, what’s next? How can I actually benefit from this situation, rather than just be sad for the rest of my life?’

“And you can actually benefit so much from tough times, because that’s when you always learn something new, that you can use again later on in your life or career if you’re approaching a similar situation.

“So learning for me is the key, and same thing with other people, you know, if people fail, they need support. We humans, in the end, I think all of us can be quite fragile at times, and no one is different than that. No one is a machine. So people need support.

“And for me, yeah, if I see somebody struggling, needs advice, or a shoulder, you know, I try to help the best I can. And usually talking, a simple thing as talking about it, can make such a big difference for a person if they’ve done a mistake, that they can then move on.”

Bottas is currently battling to retain his Sauber seat for next season, as preparations gather pace for the Audi era to come from F1 2026.

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