Bottas relished Mercedes time: 'That was my best race ever'

Valtteri Bottas will be joining Alfa Romeo next season where he will be working with Guanyu Zhou. The Finn looks back on the past five seasons with satisfaction, when he could be found in a Mercedes car.

Working at Mercedes was far from easy for Bottas. In recent years, the Finn had to contend with competition from Lewis Hamilton, who proved to be a lot faster in several respects. Nevertheless, Bottas also had some great races where he was able to beat his teammate.

"After ending a disappointing 2018, 2019 started with a bang. In Australia, I won by twenty seconds ahead of Lewis, and I think that was my best race ever," he states on the YouTube channel of Mercedes. "It wasn't easy, but that was the feeling: everything was under control, and it was an incredible feeling to go from dissatisfaction to great redemption".

This season Bottas again had to deal with a lot of criticism on his performance. The driver and the team, therefore, decided that it was better to part ways at the end of the season. Where Bottas will drive an Alfa Romeo in 2022, Mercedes found the successor of Bottas in George Russell. Russell will have to compete with Hamilton in a few months time.