Understanding Perez and Bottas: 'It's a very difficult position'

Frédéric Vasseur is looking forward to working with Valtteri Bottas next season. The Finnish driver comes over from Mercedes, where he has been a team-mate of Lewis Hamilton since 2017. Although Bottas received a lot of criticism for his performances during that period, the Alfa Romeo team boss believes that was unjustified.

Bottas was the successor to Nico Rosberg in 2017 who had just won the world title. While the German managed to beat Hamilton, Bottas did not come close to his teammate's performance during their time together. It disappointed a lot of people, but Vasseur has only sympathy for it, he says in an interview with MotorLAT.com.

"If you have a look under the drivers alongside Max the last 10 years or six years, it was Gasly, it was Albon, it was Pérez," says Vasseur, who believes the Mexican was better during his time at Racing Point. "Pérez probably did a better job last year than this season. It's a very, very difficult position and situation to be the teammate of Max or Lewis and, I think for Valtteri it wasn't too important to be considered as the leader at that."

Bottas will team up with Zhou at Alfa Romeo

Bottas will, however, be given a leadership role at Alfa Romeo, though as the Scandinavian will team up with Guanyu Zhou, who will make his debut in Formula 1 in 2022. Together, they are the successors to Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi who are parting ways with the Italian racing stable this month.