Valtteri Bottas driver profile — Mode Push: F1 Podcast

Before we dive in, why do we love Bottas?

Monica: The world needs more Bottas-es. What do I mean by that? It's so rare to be incredibly talented but also able to share the limelight, appreciate being part of the team. A lot of Lewis's other teammates have kind of imploded but Bottas is very confident in himself. It takes a strong man to be a number two. I really admire him and think he's hilarious. He also shares his coffee passion with my husband, so I feel like I hear about him all the time. Basically I want to double date with him and Tiff – we could definitely drink coffee with them. We couldn't bike with them.

Bridgette: He's basically the F1 driver equivalent of Katherine Heigl in 27 dresses. He is always the bridesmaid, but he wears it so well. This season we see the joy he's getting in returning to the sport, not as part of Mercedes. He's got swagger, he's having fun with it. He's wearing bucket hats. He's just the energy that the world needs right now.

It’s giving me F1 Gilligan vibes and I’m here for it…

Who is Valtteri Bottas? From the top.

He was born August 28th 1989 in Nastola in the south of Finland. It’s a tiny town, meaning it's actually not even a town anymore, it's been absorbed into a different town, Lahti. At it’s peak, the town had a population of 10-15k.

He's a man of the people. He was the first in his family to race. In this sport, there are two paths: you're either born into it or you are an underdog. Val first saw a race on TV and says he sat and watched it for hours asking if he could try. His grandfather kept saying, “no, Valtteri, you're too small. You need to eat porridge every morning. And then next year you'll be able to fit in the car.” So Valtteri loves porridge. And he was able to start karting at age six.

He's the fifth Finnish person to win an F1 race, which feels improbable from such a tiny country. His theory is that Finland’s karting scene is actually quite competitive from a young age, so you get this incredibly young talent pool to pull from.

In Finland, service in the national army is mandatory. Valtteri is actually a *corporal*. He's referenced that service as giving him tools to help progress through racing – learning how to work as a group and endure through hardship. Adding to his varied background, Val also studied to be a qualified car mechanic in Finland.

VB’s ascent in F1

Valtteri had a scrappy route into F1. Mika Häkkinen, the “flying Finn”, won his first race in ‘97 and then was world champion in' 98 and ‘99, as young Bottas was just getting started in the kart.

Häkkinen was obviously Bottas’ hero growing up. Amazingly, he just called Bottas up one day and asked, “do you want me to become your manager?” Just imagine them shooting the shit in the sauna.

Häkkinen became Bottas’ manager in 2000 as he was going through GP3, which he then won. Bottas went through national service right before he went to F3. Once back, he succeeded in all junior categories. Häkkinen connected him with Toto who brought him on as a test driver for Williams back when Toto was an owner of Williams and the team was just off its heyday.

Bottas was not from money – he had to find his own sponsors. A lot of his earliest and most loyal sponsors were Finnish companies, likely bringing them into sport anew like Kemppi, the arc welding company, and Wihuri, a Finnish wholesaler.

He started driving in F1 in 2013 and immediately beat his first teammate Maldonado during his first year. Next, he took on Felipe Massa, who was known to be one of the best drivers on the grid at the time. So when Nico Rosberg decided to retire early from Mercedes, Bottas was the obvious man-in-waiting for Toto.

The Mercedes era

God I miss the way Toto used to say Valtteri on D2S…

While at Mercedes, Bottas was always a bridesmaid. He was in the shadow of Lewis Hamilton, who at that point had three world championships under his belt. Valtteri stepped up and started being a good teammate, putting Mercedes first in the constructors and enabling Lewis to do his thing.

When you have a second driver team setup, which happens a lot more than the teams want us to believe, the second driver is actually key. If Lewis Hamilton got a puncture and Bottas didn’t, he couldn’t lose the points for the race, yet he also had to be an ally on the track.

Often, Valtteri would get pole over Lewis. He’s so speedy, a pole king if you will – more on those stats later. So, Valtteri would be on the front line with Lewis and would play defense which enabled Lewis to play offense.

Trivia Time

Q: Bottas is only of five Finns to win an F1 race. Where do you think Bottas falls in terms of most wins?

A: 1) Kimi Räikkönen, 2) Mika Häkkinen, 3) Valtteri Bottas, 4) Keke Rosberg, 5) Heikki Kovalainen

So Bottas actually beat a world champion (Keke Rosberg) in number of wins! More stats on Valtteri Bottas: he has entered 200 races and won 10 which puts him tied for 31st most winning-est driver of all time. Fun fact: the only drivers on the grid who have won more than him – Lewis, Fernando, Max and Vettel – have all won a world championship.

He’s also won pole 20 times – 10% of his starts. He got the fastest lap 19 times and has 67 podiums – ⅓ of his race entries. He has 141 points finishes, which is 70% of the time the man starts a race. Clearly, this is a brilliant F1 driver.

Now that Valtteri is at Alfa Romeo, it seems like he's in a good place mentally. He's since spoken about how racing in Lewis's shadow took a toll on his mental health. He’s said he never felt fully comfortable at Mercedes because they would only give him a one year extension to his contract at a time, regardless of the fact that he was winning races, winning poles and defending for his teammate. Lewis has called him “the greatest partner that he could ever drive with.” They were one of the most winning teammates of all time, with 5 constructors championships together. Yet he was never recognized and given that needed surety from the team.

When Alfa approached him for this new deal, his decision was “will Toto give me a multi-year deal?” And Toto ultimately did not extend that to him.

That drama culminated with his tussle with George Russell during the 2021 season. Bottas seemed to be coming to that conclusion that he deserved that multi-year contract and thus felt the heat. Normally, there's no time or place where a Williams should be racing a Mercedes. Yet he found himself wheel to wheel with George Russell who was then vying for his seat and madness ensued. George seemed to cause the crash at Imola, but then ran over and yelled at him while Bottas was trying to get out of his car – a rare scene in the sport. Despite that, Russell ended up impressing Toto and earning the second seat at Mercedes.

Bottas had an incredibly strong start to 2022 with Alfa Romeo, finishing in the top 6 three times and closing out the year with 49 points. That represented a huge turnaround for the team, who went from 9th in the constructors championship with only 13 points, to 6th in 2022 with 55 points.

VB off the grid

Is he a vampire? Bottas might be the most mysterious man in F1, he’s got that je ne sais quoi that you can’t help but love.So what does Bottas do when he's not in a race car?

Business in the front, party in the back. HOT action for VB down under…

Let’s start with his love life. In 2016 he married Emilia Pikkarainen, his long term girlfriend and a famous Olympian swimmer. It’s come out that his most brutal season – 2018 – was during a difficult divorce with her before they officially split in 2020.

Val has kept his thing for athletes alive, possibly because he’s such an outdoorsy guy. If you follow him on Instagram (which we highly recommend) you will see him constantly cycling with his girlfriend, Tiffany Cromwell, who is a legend in her own right. She's one of the most successful cyclists in Australia. We are Tiff fangirls, as is he. He is such a supportive boyfriend. Men take notes, please! Please wear your girlfriend's bucket hat. Carry her bag for her. Do the water bottle handoff at her races. Drive around to see her at the different parts of the Tour de France.

Recently, he's let Tiff design his race helmets since she's an artist. She does these super cool, contextual designs that tell the story of the place of the race. They've started Oath Gin together so they're firmly in business together, achieving fierce power couple status. We’re awaiting the epic wedding shots next.

As for the rest of his family – he has a dalmatian named Fanni, another athletic addition. He lives in Monaco and spends a lot of time in Nastula at his lake house. He leans into that Finnish life when he is home. For example, he has a ritual where he carves in a hole in the ice with a chain and ax, and then will do a sauna > icy lake bop. He really is a vampire and we love a vampire.

What else? He's a man of many hobbies. He owns a coffee shop and roastery. He's known to have a very specific caffeine ritual before a race – the specific amount is 100-120 milligrams of caffeine an hour before.

Beyond that, he's invested in a private jet company, a Monaco property company and he’s a co-owner of the Finnish ice hockey team, the Lahti Pelicans.

Trivia Time:

Q: What do you think Valtteri’s favorite kind of music is?

A: Imagining him in the sauna listening to some jazz? No, Valtteri Bottas is a punk rock fan – his favorite band is The Offspring. He's gotten to know the band members personally over the years.

Can you imagine right before a race getting in the zone and The Offspring comes on? Say it ain't so.

He's also quite charitable. First, the Bott-ass – the incredible photo of his naked self bathing with his butt cheeks just above the water publicly in a river in Colorado. He sold 50k copies of the picture for charity. He’s started a duathlon in his native Finland as a fundraiser for various charities and causes that promote exercise and healthy living throughout the country. He's also incredibly environmentally minded – if you are caught littering while competing, you get a one minute time penalty.

Final fun fact: he has a burger named after him. As mentioned, getting into professional racing is extremely expensive. A lot of families can't afford everything that these young drivers need. Valtteri and his family were no different. They came from very humble backgrounds– his father cleaned warehouses. And at the age of six, he started looking for help through sponsorships, as Valtteri was getting into karting. A local fast food chain restaurant called the Kiosk Bar helped fund his racing ambitions and kept doing so throughout his full parting career. And in honor of his success, the Kiosk Bar now makes and sells the Bottas burger, which costs €7.70, a nod to Val's number. In Finland that’s a big price tag, but apparently the Bottas burger is very worth it – it’s two steaks, onion, cheese, tomato, and mayo.

That price tag obviously leads to the question of his number. Why #77? Oddly enough, Bottas has been quoted to say, “to be honest, there's no reason. It's pretty simple. I liked seven, so I thought seven would be good and actually seven was already taken by Kimi. So then I was just like, well, double seven will be better. So let's go.” Clearly seven has proved lucky for him.

We’ll wrap with our favorite Bottas moments and where we think he's going:

Monica: I am very excited for this next chapter for Bottas, he’s a breath of fresh air. I was wondering if he would actually retire coming out of Mercedes, both to go out on the high and because he seemed burnout. I'm so happy he didn't – now we're getting to see this different side of him. I think it’s less likely he goes for the championship anymore, but he’ll continue his legacy. We’ll keep seeing these stats get bigger while he builds out a team around him as the leader.

Bridgette: You know who benefits? Zhou – I can't think of a better place for a young driver to come up than under the wing of Valtteri. He knows what success feels like. I think we're gonna see Valtteri the professor, maybe even the coach or principal after. He's one of the most well rounded, down to earth and just genuinely likable drivers on the grid. So Valtteri, if you ever wanna go on a triple date with some adoring fans, bring Tiff, we're happy to come to Finland. I might even jump into the ice lake.

Valtteri Bottas Revealed: The Finnish Man, Myth, and Legend