According to Toto Wolff, the path for Valtteri Bottas to keep his Mercedes seat for next year is remarkably easy.
All he has to do is do the job he was hired to do – drive very fast.
So far in 2021, however, that was easier said than done for Bottas. In the first seven races, he accumulated a little less than half the points his teammate Lewis Hamilton accumulated – 59 to 119.
This puts the Finn in fifth place in the drivers’ championship standings and is 17 points behind fourth-placed Lando Norris.
Speculation is intensifying that after five years on the Mercedes team, Bottas will be deposed in favor of youngster George Russell, whom they see as half of their future driver line-up, depending on when he receives the call.
But Wolff, Mercedes F1 co-owner and team principal, says that Bottas can secure his own position by simply making himself irreplaceable on the basis of his own results.
“I think Valtteri knows the only answer to these rumors is to be on the right track,” Wolff told reporters.
“Drive cars fast on Saturday and Sunday. If he does that, he will be in a very good position for next year. “
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The problem for Bottas is that every race this season has had a definite minus – either a definite lack of race pace compared to Hamilton, a crash, a team mistake or a strategy mismatch, and sometimes more than one of them at the same time.
The fact that the 31-year-old couldn’t keep up with Hamilton and Max Verstappen, the championship leaders, is partly due to inferior tire management – but Wolff believes the driver is improving at that.
After the French Grand Prix, in which Bottas finished fourth when his requests for an additional pit stop fell on deaf ears, Wolff said: “I still think he did a good race, to be honest, because he was completely Lewis and Max were at the forefront for large parts of it and development is going in the right direction.
“Yes, there is still a gap in tire management and we will look at that in detail, but I see real progress in the way Valtteri approaches the races – and we never doubted qualifying.”
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The post Only one way for Valtteri Bottas to stop Mercedes rumors first appeared on monter-une-startup.
