Bottas blasts ‘bull***t’ rumours about his Cadillac F1 future

Valtteri Bottas says rumours that he could lose his Cadillac race seat are “bull***t” created for “headlines” and “clicks”.

Bottas found himself the target of unfounded rumours that his days at Cadillac were numbered as his performance level had not met the team’s expectations.

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The rumours began after the Canadian Grand Prix, where Bottas was outpaced by his teammate Sergio Perez.

The Mexican racer was eight-tenths quicker in both Sprint qualifying and Grand Prix qualifying. He also recorded the team’s best result of its debut campaign with an 11th-place finish in the Sprint.

Neither driver had a stellar Grand Prix as Perez retired with a suspension failure while Bottas was four laps down. The former Mercedes driver reported that his Cadillac was not “100 per cent”.

F1’s rumour mill jumped on the disparity between the teammates in Montreal, claiming the 10-time grand prix winner was at ‘serious risk’ of losing his race seat to Colton Herta.

Bottas brushed it aside as nothing but bull.

“Well, it’s part of the sport. It’s not the first time I’ve faced those kinds of rumours,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets in Monaco.

“But it’s a bit of a shame that somebody just makes up complete bullshit, but that’s normal in this sport.

“I know my situation, the team knows my situation, they support me 100 per cent.

“So that’s why, from my side, it was okay in the end.”

Asked what he believes led to the rumours, he replied: “Headlines. Click. That’s my theory.”

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Bottas revealed he had suffered with two issues in Montreal, his power unit and his car build. That, though, was all the detail he was willing to share.

“We still have later this afternoon another meeting,” he said, “but I caught up with the team last week about it.

“We could see issues both on the PU side and the car build side. That’s as much as I can give you.

“But we can see reasons, which is good to see, but yeah, we need to keep working on the quality on how we build the car, how we fit all the parts, and so on.”

Bottas isn’t the only Cadillac team member to call the rumours fake, as team principal Graeme Lowdon told PlanetF1.com last week that there is no truth to it.

Asked for his response to the rumours, Lowdon shut down the speculation.

“That’s actually very easy to do. I mean, there is no foundation of truth in any of the rumours at all,” he said.

“I can categorically say that. Just… where do I start on the rumours themselves?

“I’ll make it really, really clear factually, they’re completely incorrect. There’s no basis of truth whatsoever in any of them.

“Secondly, if we look at the job that both drivers are doing, both Valtteri and Checo [Perez], they’re doing way more than drivers in some other teams are having to do, because we’re constructing the team while we’re racing at the same time, and that’s a very unusual task.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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