2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #15: Bottas · RaceFans

It was hard to miss Valtteri Bottas either out of the car, sporting his eighties-vintage Keke Rosberg mullet and moustache, or inside the day-glo green Sauber. Unfortunately his performances invariably failed to catch the eye, which was more due to the quality of his hardware than his driving.

You’d be forgiven for failing to notice him at all until the final race of the season, where he knocked Sergio Perez into a spin during what proved the final race for both drivers. But if Perez conspicuously failed to perform in the quickest car last year, Bottas struggled to catch the eye at all in the slowest.

It might have been a different story had Sauber’s operation been sharper at the start of the season. The team experienced problems with their pit equipment over the opening races, which scuppered their drivers’ hopes of nabbing points finishes early in the season when they were slightly more competitive. Bottas suffered costly pit delays in Australia and Japan, the latter following a particularly strong result in qualifying.

Single-lap performance was where Bottas’s value to Sauber was most obvious. He out-qualified his less experienced team mate Zhou Guanyu regularly, and showed Sauber the true pace of their car, however inadequate it often was. True, Bottas was usually the first one to get the team’s upgrades, but it didn’t always help him as the team sometimes found their new parts didn’t perform as expected. Nor did it help matters that Bottas abruptly received a new race engineer soon after the start of the season, as it took a while for the partnership to gel.

Other niggles stood in the way at times. Bottas was running one place outside the points in China when his power unit let him down. He made bold strategy calls in tricky conditions at Montreal, for no reward.

Bottas’s starts have often been a weakness of his. Again last year he seemed too timid at times, losing precious places on the opening lap. As the season wore on, for a long time it looked as though he might leave F1 last in the standings.

That didn’t happen, but he did miss the chance to score Sauber’s only points finish, which Zhou grabbed in Qatar. Bottas’s race was spoiled when he was hit by Lawson, then later struck debris while he was being lapped. That combination of misfortune in an uncompetitive car summed up his miserable season.

RaceFans’ driver rankings are based partly on the scores awarded to drivers for their performances in each round as well as other factors.

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