Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas doesn’t appear to have a seat on the grid lined up for next season.
Audi have taken control of deciding Sauber’s line-up for 2025 and after hiring Nico Hulkenberg from Haas, have a shortlist of drivers that they’re looking at to partner with him.
Valtteri Bottas does feature as an option but there’s a trio of drivers that team boss Andreas Seidl would prefer to sign at this stage.
Journalist Ted Kravitz was speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Podcast about the Finn’s future.
Bottas is undoubtedly very talented despite failing to score a point this season.
He has 10 Grand Prix victories to his name and out-qualified Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes dozens of times during their years dominating the sport in the late 2010s.
However, Kravitz has pondered that F1 team principals might have been put off signing Bottas due to his interests outside of the sport.
He’s one of the most eccentric drivers on the grid and hasn’t hidden his desire to race in the Gravel World Series away from Formula 1.
And while that may be seen as a distraction, Kravitz also admitted on the podcast that it’s probably made him the fittest driver on the grid.
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Ted Kravitz suggests reason why F1 team principals might be put off signing Valtteri Bottas
Bottas has already made it clear that he wants to stay with Sauber beyond the end of his current contract.
The Swiss team have been towards the back of the grid for years and this year they’ve stood still as all of their rivals have improved.
Bottas and teammate Zhou Guanyu are two of the only three drivers – alongside Logan Saragent – who have failed to score a point.
Zhou came closest to a top-ten finish at the season opener in Bahrain while Bottas has been more consistent this year without coming close to challenging for points.
His chances early in the season were scuppered by horrendous pit stops and while he’s regularly been half a second faster than his teammate in qualifying, he still hasn’t been able to get out of Q1 at times.
Kravitz has now wondered if Bottas’s other activities outside of Formula 1 are having an impact on how other team principals see him.
He’s on the shortlist of nearly every team that still haven’t confirmed their complete line-up without being first choice anywhere.
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Kravitz: “You might have mentioned it in a sort of jokey way, but with a lot of his extracurricular, extra Formula 1 stuff doing cycling races, is Valtteri [Bottas] sending a strange message or is that message being misinterpreted by the Piranha Club of team bosses thinking, oh, well, he sort of doesn’t seem to be very interested in Formula 1 anymore and seems to be loving life more as cycling and doing his coffee and wine and gin and other stuff.
“Do you think there’s a danger of that? That’s just an open question because I don’t know. I know Valtteri fairly well and I know that he’s very extremely committed to making the Sauber a faster race car and he loves racing and scoring points.
“But I wonder if there’s a perception out there that he’s just interested in other stuff now?”
Sauber are still monitoring Bottas and it could play out that he ends up driving alongside Hulkenberg next year.
He doesn’t appear to be keen on a move to Alpine who haven’t confirmed either driver for 2025.
Bottas has been linked with Haas too but Esteban Ocon is their preferred choice, while the Finn has also had talks with Williams although they’re lining up Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.
Anything can happen in the F1 driver’s market and a driver of Bottas’s calibre will always be of interest, but it’s unclear whether his future is currently in his hands.
The post ‘I wonder’: Ted Kravitz suggests one reason why team bosses might be put off signing Valtteri Bottas for 2025 appeared first on F1 Oversteer.