Valtteri Bottas has been open about his mental health struggles (Image: Getty)
struggled with an ‘eating disorder’ and needed a ‘psychologist’ during the early stages of his F1 career. The Finnish racer would later go on to battle at , but first had to optimise his approach to training, nutrition and mental preparation.
Bottas’ rise through the feeder series ranks was a rapid one. The Finn was racing in the GP3 Series in 2011, but after winning four of the last seven races en route to the title, he found himself on the fringes of the F1 grid.
After spending 2012 as Williams’ test and reserve driver, Bottas stepped into the Grove-based team for a challenging 2013 season, but in 2014, the iconic constructor returned to form and the now-35-year-old claimed six podiums as he finished fourth in the standings.
Behind the scenes, however, things weren’t running smoothly. “I trained myself to the point of being physically and mentally sick,” Bottas explained in the series in 2023. “It got out of hand, and it became an addiction. I wasn’t officially diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I definitely had one.”
The Nastola-born driver was only eating steamed broccoli between training sessions, taking his routine to the extreme. “It wasn’t exactly healthy,” he continued. “I wanted to be the best, and I thought I had to do that. If the team says I have to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weigh 73 kilos, then I’ll do everything I can to achieve that.”
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Valtteri Bottas struggled during his Williams career (Image: Getty)
Bottas also opened up on his mental struggles, and use of psychiatrists during his F1 career. The first instance came after the death of his friend and Marussia driver Jules Bianchi in 2015.
He explained: “I needed a psychologist to help me recover, and his first assessment of me was that I was almost like a robot who only wanted to reach my goal and had no emotions at all. It was shocking. It’s true that at that time I had no other life than F1.”
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Bottas also engaged professional help after leaving . “It was a big hurdle to ask for outside help,” he noted. “People think they’re such a tough guy that they don’t need help, that they can handle things by looking in the mirror. But a professional knows how to ask the right questions and open a lot of locks.”
In recent years since leaving Brackley, Bottas has come out of his shell even more and as he heads into a season on the sidelines after departing Sauber, he has grown to become one of the sport’s most interesting and adored personalities.