Valtteri Bottas says he suffered from an eating disorder early in his Formula 1 career.
At 33, Valtteri Bottas is starting to have some perspective on his career in Formula 1, he who is entering his 11th season in the elite. It is rare for the Nordic to open up without confession regarding how he has experienced this adventure so far, but that is precisely what he has just done with the largest Finnish daily, Helsingin Sanomat.
His revelations are edifying: Bottas explains that at the start of his career he followed a diet composed largely of steamed broccoli, between intense physical preparation sessions. “I trained to suffer physically and mentally”he told journalist Maria Veitola. “It got out of control, it became an addiction. No eating disorder was officially diagnosed, but there really was one.”
“It wasn’t very healthy. I wanted to be the best, and I thought I had to do that. If the team said I had to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weighed 73, I was going to do anything for it.”
Valtteri Bottas enjoys an ice cream in 2018, a scene clearly unthinkable a few years earlier
“Like a robot that doesn’t feel anything”
This is not the only difficulty encountered by Bottas, who has had to call on the services of a psychologist twice. The first time was following the fatal accident of Jules Bianchi at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. “To help me get over it, I needed a psychologist whose first assessment was that I was almost like a robot who only wants to achieve his goal and does not feel anything at all”he explains. “It destabilized me. It’s true that at the time, there was only F1 in my life.”
Subsequently, the pilot Williams had an unexpected opportunity when the surprise retirement of Nico Rosberg opened the stable doors for him Mercedes in view of the 2017 season, but in five years he has never managed to rise to the level of his teammate Lewis Hamilton and achieve his world title goal. He finally lost his seat at the end of 2021 and found refuge with Alfa Romeo.
“The season [2021] was more difficult once more, when my future was at stake and I didn’t know which team I was going to ride for”concedes the one that has been replaced by George Russell behind the wheel of the second Silver Arrow. “It was a big step to ask for outside help. You tell yourself that you’re a badass, that you don’t need help, that you can handle things by looking at yourself in the mirror. But a professional knows how to ask the right questions and open the right doors.”
As for his lack of performance once morest Hamilton, Bottas acknowledges: “For someone with such a competitive spirit, it was hard to accept. It was only the last year that I was able to accept that Lewis was a better driver. I always wondered how I might beat and win the world title. These five years were exhausting. I wanted to win everything straight away, and when that didn’t happen, it was hard to accept.”
The Alfa Romeo driver seems in any case more fulfilled in his current environment, and will begin his second season as the spearhead of the Hinwil structure.
