As Valtteri Bottas faces his final moments at the Mercedes Formula 1 team, the Finn would have liked it to be different – Of course, he never really stood a chance in a team focused on their current Champion, Lewis Hamilton.
It is now a foregone conclusion that Valtteri Bottas will no longer be with Mercedes next season. The current teammate of Lewis Hamilton will be replaced by George Russell and it is with Alfa Romeo that Bottas will continue his career as a driver.
Bottas is currently experiencing his last moments with the team. He arrived in 2017, but he has not had an easy time of it, having had to work in Lewis Hamilton’s shadow. The Briton has taken all the limelight and won the world championship. A distinction that Bottas was aiming for.
“I wanted to be champion”
Valtteri Bottas looked back on his experience at Mercedes. The Finn expressed one regret, that of not having been world champion:
“I wanted to be champion.” says Bottas,
“In a way, it feels like a failure not to have achieved this goal with Mercedes. But I tried everything and gave it my all, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”
Of course, it could never be for the Finn when operating in a team solely focused on Lewis Hamilton’s world record attempting Championship count. It was clear as far back as 2017 when he joined the team that Toto Wolff, the team boss of Mercedes, was never going to repeat the frequent incidents between his drivers as the team experienced with Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
As exciting as the interteam battle was for fans, Wolff would know that the advantage in car and engine design Mercedes had in those early years would slowly errode over the coming seasons, and Mercedes couldn’t afford to have that competition within the teams (McLaren 2007 for instance?).
A peek inside Toto Wolff’s office
Perhaps we’ll see a resumption of close competition with Russell in the squad now, certainly it cannot be helped but noticed by this Judge the timing of the new driver coinciding with a brand new rule set and technical shakeup, a reset; much like 2014 with Rosberg and Hamilton. Sounds like the German marque is confident to me.
M’Lud, with the greatest respect I have to dissent from with your expressed view that “the Finn (has been) operating in a team solely focused on Lewis Hamilton’s world record attempting Championship count.
To the contrary, Mercedes is, quite rightly, focussed (as we spell it in English) primarily on winning the Constructors Championship – the Drivers Championship is a merely an afterthought to a constructor.
The fact that Lewis Hamilton has never been able to grasp the reality that he is employed and paid by teams to further their pursuit of Constructors Championships rather than to chase personal glory for himself (however badly he undermines their objective in the process) and regards racing teams as philanthropic organisations that exist to pay him money and provide him with the means to win Drivers Championships does not alter that. It is, indeed, the cross that Toto Wolff and, before him, Ron Dennis have always had to bear.
Their problem has been to harness Hamilton’s prodigious driving ability to their pursuit of Constructors Championships without letting him disrupt their entire endeavour with his selfish behaviour and personal ambition.
To that end, and to minimise his ability to do so, they have had to evolve stratagems that are, when deployed, unfortunately to the disadvantage of his teammates. Greatly though, in the interests of fair play and natural justice, they have been reluctant to do so.
In your first paragraph you used ‘focused’ in your second you claim ‘focussed’ is the correct English spelling.
You are mistaken.
Focused’ and ‘focussed’ are two spellings of the same word: Focused (one ‘s’) is the standard spelling of this term in modern English.
Focussed (with a double ‘s’) is a rare variant spelling, although it is more common in British and Australian English than it is in American English.
If you choose to humiliate others, please check every detail you type!!
It is you who are mistaken, Carlo.
If you choose to (try to) humiliate others, please check every detail you type.
In my first paragraph I was quoting verbatim the text of His Lordship’s dissertation, replete with his own spelling.
In my second paragraph I made a mischievously waspish reference to His Lordship’s (frequently slovenly) spelling but for you to state that I claimed ‘focussed’ is the “correct English spelling” of the word is at best imprecise and at worst an outright lie. Read what I actually wrote. The only person who has raised the concept of what is “correct” is you.
Most certainly, I had no intention of attempting to humiliate His Lordship!
Your rebuttal looks suspiciously like an uncredited plagiarism of the first article Google throws up upon the topic you raise. (I checked.)
As for usage, The Times and The Telegraph deploy both spellings, variously and inconsistently. In America, The New Yorker always spells it “focussed”.
It really depends on whether you pronounce the word – “foke-used” or “foke-ussed”. Would you write “focusing” or “focussing” ?
Much has been written on this dilemma and you can find it online but I doubt many here are interested in debating it. We come here to read about motor racing and Formula One, not about grammar and spelling.
Not least because, along with punctuation and sentence construction they elude the ability of so many who write on here. Including “G”.
Tell that to Ferrari (and fans)… they would sell their own grandmother (Ok, not literally – we all know how matriarchal the Italian family is) to have their guy win the WDC, and couldn’t give a flying farfalle for the Constructors
To demonstrate such a profound ignorance of how Formula One actually works in just one semi-literate sentence is a considerable achievement. Albeit an unenviable one.
Once Marchionne took Ferrari public their F1 team is now viewed as a profit center for the shareholders, and the constructors WC is more valuable to them than a drivers WC. As for the poster “G” – the only thing about F1 he understands is how to play the race card when Hamilton is discussed.
Untrue, poster “cavallinorampantef1”.
Thanks, CR. I always enjoy reading your wise and well-informed postings. They stand out like beacons of sanity in a sea of nonsense and I appreciate them. 🙂
1, In what way exactly is my comment demonstrating “a profound ignorance of how Formula One actually works”? One of the fundamental truths of F1 is that Ferrari do now (ok, maybe less so now, admittedly), and always have, favoured the Drivers title over the Constructors. I can recall in commentary, Murray and James Hunt discussing this, and Brundle with DC more recently
2, Semi literate? Just because I don’t blather on for 230 words in an attempt to demonstrate some form of linguistic superiority….
3, Learn to read a bit of sarcasm dude, and lighten up
If I thought you or what you wrote were worthy of reply. I would. But I don’t.
And yet there you go, proving your own oxymoron