Mercedes driver Valterri Bottas' motivation suffered when F1 season start was "taken away"

Mercedes

Bottas' motivation suffered when F1 season start was "taken away"

The Finn was primed for the 2020 campaign to get going

Ian Parkes

Wednesday 6 May 2020 09:00

Valtteri Bottas has revealed how he struggled to initially cope when his best-laid plans for the new Formula 1 season were "taken away".

The Mercedes driver claimed in pre-season that he felt he was the best prepared he had been in his career to finally end team-mate Lewis Hamilton's domination of F1, with the Briton winning five of the last six drivers' titles.

But the Finn has said when the season was put on hold that it was then "quite difficult" to keep his motivation as high as it had been, before eventually coming to terms with the situation at hand.

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"Obviously, there was the unknown of whether we were going to race the next week, the weekend after, quite soon, or, when is the next race," reflected Bottas.

"So initially it was quite tricky but then once there was more confirmation about different grands prix being either postponed or cancelled you kind of had to accept 'Okay, it's going to be months that we're going to be racing next'.

"It was a strange feeling because I was so ready and everything was so well prepared for the whole season. I was really keen to go, really keen to start, and it felt like everything was taken away.

"But I'm sure I'm not the only driver who felt like that. I'm sure all the team members and fans felt the same, and you just had to accept the situation.

"To make the most out of this situation, it's so rare we actually get this long a time to be in the same place, to do different things, to have such a good training period for a driver. I've never had this before, so I'm really trying to make all use of this situation as I can."

Bottas has unsurprisingly made clear there is "only one goal", and that is to become F1 world champion.

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But he has declared that going into the season opener in Australia, prior to the race being cancelled, he also had other ambitions in his sights.

"There were many micro-targets within my small engineering team that we had been working on quite a lot during the winter with my driving style, with my performance, and we had a clear plan for the season in terms of how to approach it, and everything was so ready," added Bottas.

"I felt in winter testing we managed to improve my driving quite a bit, certain types of corners, and some things with my driving style, so it would have been quite easy to see how it worked in races. We still have to wait."