Valtteri Bottas heartbreak uncovered after F1 2025 contract reneged

Lando Norris's McLaren leads the pack at the start of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix
Valtteri Bottas put pen to paper on a contract to race for Sauber in the F1 2025 season, it has emerged, only for the team to sign Gabriel Bortoleto instead.
Bottas was left without a seat for F1 2025 after Sauber announced in November that they had signed Bortoleto, the 2024 F2 champion, as Nico Hulkenberg’s team-mate.
Valtteri Bottas signed new contract for F1 2025 before Sauber signed Bortoleto
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock and Michelle Foster
Hulkenberg and Bortoleto form an all-new driver lineup for the soon-to-be Audi F1 team, with Bottas and team-mate Zhou Guanyu dropped at the end of last season.
Bottas has since returned to Mercedes, with whom he claimed 10 F1 victories in a five-year spell between 2017 and 2021, as the team’s reserve driver for the F1 2025 campaign.
Sauber’s decision to drop Bottas came after the Finnish driver expressed optimism about remaining with the team for F1 2025.
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A report by Swiss-German publication Blick – known to have close connections to the Hinwil-based team – claimed over the Singapore Grand Prix weekend in September that Bottas had signed a one-year contract extension with Sauber, with an unnamed rival team boss revealing the news.
Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com at the United States Grand Prix a few weeks later, Bottas confirmed that he had agreed terms on a new deal with Sauber after productive negotiations with team boss Mattia Binotto.
Bottas went on to reveal that he was “just basically waiting for the green light” to seal his place on the F1 2025 grid.
However, Bottas’s hopes were dashed just two weeks later when Sauber confirmed the signing of Bortoleto three days after the Brazilian Grand Prix.
It has now emerged that Bottas was so confident of his F1 2025 chances that he physically signed a contract to stay at Sauber, only for the team to finalise a deal for Bortoleto instead.
Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com in a press conference following the signing of Bortoleto, Binotto acknowledged that it had been a tough decision to overlook Bottas for the second seat alongside Hulkenberg.
He said: “First I am getting on well, very, very well with Valtteri.
“It has been since I’ve started here in August, a great relationship, building it, trusting each others, and I think we really set up good communication between us.
“We had several talks about the journey, the length, duration of the journey, the difficulties we may be facing the next season. We know that the next one will be a difficult season as a team, as a journey to towards the Audi F1 transformation.
“It’s a long, long journey and I think that’s mainly on the duration where we reflect together a lot, and it’s when we came and I came to the conclusion that maybe we need to have a young driver with us.
“So it has been really a mutual understanding, if not agreement. Certainly a mutual understanding of the situation, the facts of what’s required.
“More than that, I’d like you to underline is I think he has been certainly a very strong candidate.
“I know he’s very fast. I know that he has proven to be very fast, still to be very fit, he knows the team, and certainly here he is very high rated, and he’s very highly rated in the paddock.
“So overall, it has not been an easy one, but sometimes you need to come to a conclusion and make a decision and lead.”
Ahead of his final race for Sauber in Abu Dhabi last month, Bottas admitted that it was a “big mistake” to have joined the team in 2022 following his Mercedes departure.
More on Valtteri Bottas and Sauber
Put to him that joining Sauber was not the best move for his career, he told Finnish publication Ilta Sanomat: “Absolutely not. If I could go back three years, I would have gone somewhere else. Unfortunately, that’s how it is.
“This was a big mistake, but it’s hard to predict these things in advance.
“That first year with Vasseur was a good thing. The team spirit was good and the results were quite good.
“The last two seasons have been a bit of a downhill slide all the time. Of course, that affects my image as a driver. If you can’t show results, people kind of forget your name.
“This season has undoubtedly been quite scary. When we set goals with Vasseur in 2022 and how to achieve them, we had a clear plan.
“But after he left, all the goals and plans went to the scrap heap. Since then, it has been significantly more challenging.”
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