Bottas returns to Mercedes as F1 third driver

Valtteri Bottas has been signed by Mercedes to be its third driver for the 2025 System 1 season, after he missed out on maintaining his seat at Sauber.

The Finnish racer scored 10 grand prix wins with the Silver Arrows in a 100-race stint between 2017 and 2021 when he was partnered with Lewis Hamilton.

He was dropped from the workforce forward of 2022 as workforce boss Toto Wolff opted to advertise long-time Mercedes junior George Russell from Williams.

Russell will lead Mercedes in 2025 alongside one other of the workforce’s junior drivers, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, with Hamilton heading to Ferrari instead of Carlos Sainz.

Talking because the information of his Mercedes deal – key to which was how he maintained good relations with Wolff even after leaving – was made official, Bottas stated: “I’m comfortable to lastly reply the query I’ve posed over the previous month.

“Returning house to the Mercedes household as third driver for 2025 is what’s subsequent and I couldn’t be extra happy. I need to thank Toto, the workforce at Brackley, and everybody on the three-pointed star for welcoming me again with open arms.

“Regardless of the challenges of the previous few years, I do know that I’ve nonetheless bought a lot extra to contribute to F1.

“Since I used to be a five-year-old child rising up in Nastola, Finland, my focus has been on attaining success within the prime tier of motorsport. I’ve been lucky to have loved many unimaginable moments in my 12 years of racing in F1 up to now.

“As I return to the place the place so lots of these moments had been achieved, I’m wanting ahead to utilizing all of the information I’ve gained to assist the workforce to carry out and progress in the direction of our aim of preventing for world championships.”

Former Mercedes reserve driver and ex-F1 racer Mick Schumacher will go away the workforce as 2024 ends.

After being dropped by Mercedes, Bottas joined Sauber for a three-year stint, with the workforce generally known as Alfa Romeo from 2022-23.

Issues started promisingly when he was a daily factors scorer and with Audi deciding to purchase into the organisation in 2022 forward of a 2026 rebranding, however Bottas got here to view heading to Sauber as a “mistake”.

He missed out on staying with the workforce in 2025 when it first signed Nico Hulkenberg from Haas after which, after principal goal Sainz determined to hitch Williams as a substitute on account of Sauber’s main downturn in outcomes this 12 months, it selected to choose 2024 System 2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto to finish its line-up.

Bottas additionally stated that former Sauber workforce boss Fred Vasseur leaving to run Ferrari on the finish of his first 12 months with the Swiss workforce was, he feels, “a giant half” in why issues had not labored out.

“There was a transparent plan for targets for the three years and likewise tips on how to get there [with Vasseur at the helm],” Bottas stated. “However these plans and targets went into the bin when he left.”