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"It wasn't exactly healthy" - Valtteri Bottas reveals on TV that the formula race triggered an eating disorder
Valtteri Bottas talks openly about his difficulties in the early stages of his formulaic career in the second episode of the Maria Veitola season of Night Live. 2014 was a very difficult year, and in the end Bottas turned to outside help, as there is no emotional support in the F1 world.
In between his home presentation, Bottas tells Veitola about his dreams of Formula 1 in his youth and what it was like when he had already reached the top.
Bottas started his F1 career in 2013, but just a year later he was driving himself up the wall by training too much and eating too little.
"I trained myself sick physically and mentally. It got out of hand and became an addiction. There was no official diagnosis of an eating disorder, but there definitely was," Bottas reveals in the programme.
"I needed a psychologist to help me recover, and his first assessment of me was that I was almost like a robot."
Bottas steamed himself nothing but broccoli between long jogs and continued to train. All this he kept secret even from his coach.
"It wasn't exactly healthy. I wanted to be the best, and I thought that's what I had to do. If the team says I have to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weigh 73 kilos, then you do everything you can."
Around the same time, his team-mate from the past, Jules Bianchi, died in an F1 accident.
Due to his own overstressed state, Bottas found it difficult to deal with everything that had happened.
"I needed a psychologist to help me recover, and his first assessment of me was that I was almost like a robot who just wanted to get to the finish line and had no emotions at all. It was startling. It's quite true that at the time I had no life other than F1."
Bottas and Veitola also spoke to Mika Häkkinen, who has been an important figure in Bottas' career.
They talk about how little emotional support F1 racers receive and how they are left very much alone on the mental side.
Häkkinen recalls how it took him seven years to get his first F1 win.
During that time he was in a constant mental battle with himself, wallowing in self-reproach and wondering what he was doing wrong. Eventually, he sought help for himself.
Bottas says that before last season he again turned to outside help. At the time, he switched from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo.
"Last season was another difficult period, when my future was on the line and I didn't know which team I was going to drive for. There was a big threshold to ask for outside help," says Bottas.
"You think you're such a tough guy that you don't need help, that I can handle things by looking in the mirror. But a professional can ask the right questions and open a lot of locks."
There's no discussion with the stable mates about the need for emotional help.
"I'm not the only one there who has a hard time sometimes."
The number two spot at Mercedes was a very difficult one for Bottas. He drove for Mercedes from 2017 to 2021.
"For such a competitive driver it was difficult to accept. It was only in the last year that I could accept that Lewis Hamilton was the better driver. I was always wondering how I could beat him and win the world championship. It was a pretty consuming five years," Bottas says in the episode.
Bottas reflects that he should have been kinder to himself at the time and given himself more time during the first couple of years with Mercedes.
"I wanted to win everything straight away, and then when it didn't happen, it was hard to accept."
Veitola says it was that conversation that stuck with her most from the visit, as Bottas said he had been left emotionally alone in his career. Even at the top of F1 you don't get enough emotional support.
"While doing this programme, I was struck time and again by how alone people are and how the difficulty of getting help extends even into that world," says Veitola.
Bottas' wife, racing cyclist Tiffany Cromwell, reveals to Veitola that the change of stables had an impact on his well-being.
The man became much more relaxed as soon as he switched from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo in 2022. There is also much less outside criticism now.
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN
Hinwil, Zurich, Switzerland
Valtteri Bottas 77
Guanyu Zhou 24
