Why the 2024 campaign is suddenly critical for one F1 stalwart

There’s an exclusive club inside the current Formula 1 driving crop. Just three of their number can boast an unbroken run of continuous employment in the championship stretching back over a decade. And, when the various 2020 COVID-19 absences are factored in for Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez, membership of this group slims down to just one: Valtteri Bottas.

The Finnish driver is about to embark on his 12th F1 campaign, having started off with Williams in 2013. Since then, 223 races have been held, with Bottas’s only missing start being the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, where the now 34-year-old withdrew due to a back injury sustained in a qualifying crash (he still qualified sixth, which keeps that unbroken streak going).

“I’m motivated,” he says of the upcoming season, his third with the Sauber squad so recently known as Alfa Romeo.

Bottas is speaking in the East Crypt of London’s Guildhall building – under a stained-glass window depicting Londoner, and father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer. Queen Victoria once banqueted in these surroundings, where it was said on Monday night that Oliver Cromwell kept his horses stabled down during his time Lord Protector in the Interregnum period on the British isles, the hooves scuffing the pillars holding up the subterranean surround.

Above sits the magnificent medieval Great Hall, where Sauber and its new title sponsor – Stake – are launching the C44 in about an hour’s time. With a new livery motif and name, the theme of the day is of a new chapter for Sauber.

That’s exactly what team representative, and managing director of the Sauber Group, Alessandro Alunni Bravi says again and again, all while insisting “it’s not that we forget Sauber”, despite its absence from the team’s official name and branding. Thankfully, it and the long-held C car moniker live on in the 2024 FIA F1 chassis names list. But for Bottas, the 2024 season represents a new chapter of a different kind.

Bottas is eager to earn himself a new deal with Sauber that takes him into the Audi era

Photo by: Sauber

“You have to be [motivated],” he continues. “It’s also my job, even in the harder times. Especially when it’s a new season. And based on what I’ve seen throughout the winter and the progress and all things new, I am motivated. I really want to have a strong season.

“Also, when you are going into your contract year, you also want to be able to show what you can do. Mentally I feel fresh, I feel like I’ve been able to process last year – because in the end for me it was a disappointment as a result.

“I was expecting more. But now I feel like I’m 100% over that and I’m motivated and fresh for the new season to try and make a really strong year and showcase what I can do.”

"Last year we didn’t get our targets. So, yeah, needs to be new targets and the main thing is seeing immediately a good step in performance compared to the competition from last year" Valtteri Bottas

This is Bottas’s challenge for the new year: convince Sauber that he’s deserving of a fresh deal for 2025, ideally with a contract that runs into the start of the Audi era coming in 2026. In doing so, he’d prolong his career into F1’s next car design rules reset and secure works racing employment at another of Germany’s mighty car makers.

A few weeks ago, succeeding in that task looked to be simpler. Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris inking fresh Ferrari and McLaren deals rather maintained the status quo of a dull-looking driver market, in terms of its upper echelons at least. Then Hamilton’s Ferrari deal blew it up brilliantly, with the knock-on effect set to filter down to the midfield too.

For now, Carlos Sainz is also looking for fresh employment in 2025, having been close to securing his own Ferrari future. Just a few months ago, it would’ve been inconceivable that the driver that has run Leclerc so close – and outshone him in three of Ferrari’s biggest chances to foil Red Bull in 2023 – would be being ushered towards the exit.

The chances of a straight swap with Hamilton’s open Mercedes seat for Sainz aren’t straightforward. Especially with Toto Wolff considering doing “something bold” and could be eyeing a rapid promotion for Mercedes junior Kimi Antonelli.

And with his father’s first Dakar win (of five total) for Audi, Sainz’s links to the OEM grow. Plus, why wouldn’t it want a clever and tenacious driver to help finish the building of its first F1 project? After all, some of Ferrari’s best set-up gains last year are thought to have come via his experiments.

With his exit from Ferrari imminent, Sainz Jr would be a sensible target for the team that will become Audi after the German giant's Dakar success with his father

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

So, Sainz to Sauber/Stake/(not quite) Audi in 2025 therefore makes logical sense. But what of the team’s other seat? It is currently held by Zhou Guanyu, who secured an extension into 2024 with a 2023 campaign that matched well with Bottas, despite his comparative lack of experience.

Zhou is set to make his home race debut this year, with the returning Shanghai race and its resurfaced track back on the calendar after the pandemic restrictions have finally been lifted in China. Zhou told the assembled reporters underneath the Guildhall that tickets for his dedicated grandstand at the race had “sold out in four minutes”.

And, with Audi having a sales problem in China – something not helped by its lack of newly released electric models in recent years – the chatter about the crypt was of how retaining Zhou would also make a lot of additional sense to the manufacturer. With the deck seemingly stacked and his F1 career only secure until the end of 2024, it’s therefore not surprising that Bottas is starting off the year with some fighting talk.

“We need to be almost bold with our targets,” he tells Autosport. “We need to target high. Because, as everyone knows, last year we didn’t get our targets. So, yeah, needs to be new targets and the main thing is seeing immediately a good step in performance compared to the competition from last year.

“And being much more consistent and being able to really progress with the car and not to get stuck in terms of the development. So, in terms of results, we need to start the season by being consistently in the points and then hopefully go beyond that, which was not the case last year.”

Handily, Bottas has already seen “quite a bit of new resources” coming into Sauber – boosted by the Stake deal. Asked to expand on this, he replies: “Towards the end of last year, actually, there was quite a few people that started joining the team [in] different departments, from different teams.

“I wouldn’t say there’s one particular department of the factory [that has benefitted], it’s a bit all around. We have more people, we have fresh blood, we have new ideas, we now have more experience from other teams – including top teams.

“Whether it’s about vehicle dynamics, whether it’s about aero – you name it, we have a bit more strength in our team now. They’ve already given an impact for this year’s car as well.”

Retaining Zhou has obvious commercial benefits to the Sauber team, meaning Bottas faces a fight to secure an extension to his current deal

Photo by: Sauber

The relentless messaging of Sauber’s Stake arrangement being “a fresh start, it almost feels like a new team”, as Bottas puts it, can surely be interpreted as being as much about internal communication to the team’s staff as promoting the sponsor. The Audi arrival hangs over everything, after all.

But every constructors’ championship position Sauber can secure in the next two seasons will soften the start of the team’s next new era through additional prize money. Bottas explains Audi comes up in conversations within the team “a little bit more now that Alfa Romeo as a brand is out”, after a five-year branding exercise relationship with the Stellantis marque.

“For sure the co-operation will start somehow quite soon, I would imagine – because if Audi wants to be competitive in their first year, Sauber and Audi will need to work together,” he adds. “But that’s all going [on] behind the scenes and also as a driver, it’s whatever meetings and stuff is happening behind, we are not always aware of those things. But, things are just starting to pick up now thanks to the team being… unleashed!”

"Obviously, my priority and biggest commitment is the Audi project, which is my target" Valtteri Bottas

Bottas having quoted the hashtag mantra of the glitzy launch in his typical deadpan, shrewd humour suggests he’s prepared to play what can at times be a ridiculous F1 game, even after all these years. That aspect of a driver’s game takes on a new dimension when the F1 silly season goes into overdrive. There are calls to made, opportunities to be sussed.

In five of his 11 F1 seasons so far, Bottas proved his worth to Mercedes in being unflappable and compliant, just as things needed steadying after the rocky Nico Rosberg vs Hamilton years and that combustible 2016 season. He says of the possibility of a return, “as far as I know, no burned bridges” at Mercedes. But such a move would run against Wolff’s early suggestions for what might be done with Hamilton’s seat, plus that 2021 Imola crash with George Russell and all the swearing that followed still plays quickly in the mind of F1’s hive brain.

In any case, Bottas is clear on what he needs to do this year as he looks to the future. Only if his Audi ambitions are thwarted will his attentions turn elsewhere.

“We haven’t spoken on the phone yet with Toto,” he concludes. “And if I would go back, yeah… Well, obviously, my priority and biggest commitment is the Audi project, which is my target. But if that wouldn’t happen, then actually there’s no team that I wouldn’t go [to] perhaps. I know my priorities and I’ve got my list, so…”

Hamilton's exit from Mercedes will leave a vacant seat at the Brackley team where Bottas won 10 races, but his main concern is to stay at Sauber

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images