Valtteri Bottas’ future once again remains uncertain. However, he is trying his best to make a claim to those Team Principals still missing drivers in their lineup that he is an option to consider. One team still to consider is of course, his current employer, Sauber. As Sauber remain the only team that has yet to score a point this season, Bottas finished in 15th place after George Russell’s disqualification in the Belgian Grand Prix. While not motivating for his team, it was positive for him as he continues to outpace his teammate, Zhou Guanyu.
Returning to his future, Bottas said that his plans for the summer break include getting his deal done, but with a bit of testing.
“Still an open plan actually. First thing I’ll do is I’ll be testing here on Tuesday. So that’s the beginning of break, and then I’ll decide. Yeah, hopefully we’ll have some news about my job, and then we go from there. “
The former Mercedes driver would like to sort his 2025 contract in the upcoming weeks: “Ideally, yes. Obviously it’s not 100% up to me, but that would be the ideal scenario.”
When asked if he had any meetings, Bottas finally gave us some sort of news: he has meetings planned, and possibly one with Mattia Binotto, the future team principal of Sauber/Audi.
“Yes, some meetings planned. (Binotto) is part of our team, so of course we will speak with him.”
Speaking about his race ahead of the summer break, Bottas said that overtaking had been very difficult for him.
“More difficult than ever probably here in Spa. I think the only thing today was that we had a tailwind at the back straight, which makes the tow effect smaller. But it feels like every year the cars are getting slightly more difficult to follow. I think they’re getting more aero-sensitive year by year. So that’s how it felt like. It was quite tricky to follow.”
He also brought up the topic of tyre degradation, which for most teams was “surprisingly”worse than expected.
“Yeah, it did surprise us. I think in the end if I could do the race again, I would do one stop longer first in and then longer stint with the hard. But we couldn’t predict it, especially with these track times today.”
Asked on what in his opinion could have increased the phenomenon, the Finn mentioned the recently installed track surface:
“The new tarmac bits. The new tarmac seems to create less overall wear compared to other times. But it looked like on Friday that the new tarmac was the reason for some graining.”
Time will only tell if Bottas can achieve his two goals before the end of the season: finding a new contract and then scoring points in 2024.
