“I feel like Lewis felt the same as well,” Valtteri Bottas reveals an intricate detail which changed the way he drove during his time at Mercedes

Valtteri Bottas was a Mercedes driver for 5 years before he departed from the team to join Alfa Romeo for the 2022 season. In his experience so far with the team, the Finn pointed out many things that the team does differently compared to his previous employer. One of those things seemed to be massively interesting as it had an impact on both Bottas and his former teammate Lewis Hamilton.

When you compare a team like Mercedes to Alfa Romeo, the clear difference is the availability of resources in order to fuel their charge. Valtteri Bottas further revealed that his previous team had the funds to invest massively in technological advances. This led to both him and Lewis being micromanaged when it came to choosing the preferred setup on their car for any session. There were multiple data provided by the engineers who were adamant that the drivers should follow their instructions regarding a setup change.

Valtteri Bottas was not a big fan of this. When it came to data accuracy, the info was correct most of the time but not 100%. The Finn believed that it was necessary to incorporate how the driver feels and not rely too much on computer data. The Alfa Romeo driver is much happier with his current team as he gets a proper say in how the car is configured for the weekend. He furthermore went on to tell us about his experience at Brackley.

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“It was sometimes a bit of a battle,” Valtteri Bottas on having a say in car setups during a race weekend with Mercedes

“It is just how a top team works,” Bottas revealed as he talked more about the proceedings that happened during a race weekend. “I feel like Lewis felt the same as well. He sometimes wanted to go in his direction, but the engineers would be like: ‘No, the computer says this,’ he said.

“So it was sometimes a bit of a battle but it is good to discuss those things and it’s just the way it is,” he explained.

“They have pretty advanced technology and simulation tools that allow it and quite often the computer was right but not 100 per cent,” he concluded.

Being a smaller team, Alfa Romeo did not have the resources to follow Mercedes’s suit which in turn played right into Valtteri Bottas’s hand. The driver currently had 46 points on the board and will be aiming to increase that number at the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix.

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