Bottas certain: 'I would have done better with a multi-year contract'

For Valtteri Bottas, five years with Mercedes will soon come to an end. Before the Finn switches to Alfa Romeo, he looks back on the past years in the F1 podcast Beyond the Grid. Bottas does not spare himself in the least.

When Nico Rosberg decided to quit F1 at the very last minute at the end of 2016, Bottas was given a unique opportunity to become world champion one day. Once at Mercedes, it was not to be. "I wanted to be champion," Bottas says. "In a way, that feels like a failure that I haven't achieved that with Mercedes. But I've tried everything and given everything but it just wasn't meant to be."

Yet there is also a sense of pride. "We've won the constructors' championship four times in a row. Hopefully five years at the end of the season. I have grown enormously. As a driver and as a human being. But at the same time, it's been demanding (at Mercedes). People expect a lot from you. It consumes energy. Sometimes you are floating on the limit on whether you enjoy it or not. Now I look at the bigger picture and it was a great time."

In the podcast, Bottas goes back in his mind to 2017, the moment when he could truly call himself a driver for top team Mercedes. "I should have been more patient. I said at the time, 'I'm going to be champion'. I had to do it now. There were times when I tried too hard. The level at which Lewis performed is difficult to match. If you try too much, the stopwatch doesn't like it."

He continues: "If I knew in 2017 that I would be at the team for five years, I would've allowed myself a bit more time to learn things step by step. In my mind I thought it was a one year oppournity. And then again, then again. That never gave me flexibility. With a multi-year contract, I would have absolutely performed better."

The outside world sometimes thinks that the first driver (in this case Hamilton) is being favoured. Bottas doesn't feel that way. "I think Mercedes have been fair to me. Some seasons I started strong, but then some unlucky moments or maybe I had a bad race or two. Once there was a gap in the points, the focus shifts to the car that was likely to become champion. The difference between Lewis and me is that he can always perform at a high level, he rarely had bad weekend sometimes. It's impressive how he performs."