18/03/2019
NEWS STORY
Whether his Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was one of those included in his infamous "to whom it may concern, f*** off" radio call yesterday, is something that only Valtteri Bottas knows.
Certainly, Wolff will have been behind the order to move aside for teammate Lewis Hamilton during last year's Russian Grand Prix, but can the Austrian be held responsible for what was a pretty disappointing season for the Finn, who subsequently admitted it was his worst ever in F1.
Speaking at the end of a shock, but nonetheless convincing win for the Finn, Wolff admitted that he was delighted to see that Bottas had essentially rediscovered his mojo.
"Since I started to work with drivers fifteen years ago, I try to comprehend what is going on in their brains," said Wolff. "How he recovered from being written off, not up for the job in the second half of the season last year to scoring one of the most dominant victories that we've seen in recent days shows us that human potential, how much it is a mind game.
"For me, it's a bit of a fairy-tale," he continued, "don't let others break you, believe in yourself, and he has shown that the whole weekend, not one single session that he wasn't good enough.
"When he left, after the Christmas party, he said he was tired and he needed to recover because it was the most shitty half of the season he has ever had," revealed the Austrian, "and he came back at the end of January and said: 'I'm back'.
"In 2008, I got a call from a young boy who asked for a meeting," he recalled. "It was a snowy day in Vienna, and this young Finnish boy came in with a pullover, no jacket, and asked for advice.
"He went on to dominate the Formula Renault Eurocup, he almost lapped the whole field, this is the Valtteri Bottas that I have seen today.
"I think that maybe these years at Williams, and then the shock draft into Mercedes was something that he needed to digest," he admitted. "He went off tired at the end of the season and came back and the 2008 young man came back. I'm very happy... he deserves it."
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