As a man suffering from androgenetic alopecia, Noël Ummels can’t help but envy a man with a mane like Valtteri Bottas, especially when he plays second fiddle so beautifully.
Is there panic in the ranks with Newey’s departure? Not at all, I believe Christian Horner is right in saying that Red Bull has an extremely solid structure in its technical management. It would be quite something if the quality of your cars depended on one person. That was the case during the Formula 1 Middle Ages. While Adrian Newey may be the best in his field, he is just as dependent on the rest of the team as the other best in his field: Max Verstappen. Otherwise, Red Bull would have become champion during all his years of service.
Red Bull has its staff in excellent order, with one exception: the role of second driver. It’s not easy alongside Verstappen. As new attempt Liam Lawson says: every driver thinks they can beat the other, otherwise there’s no point in participating. There’s some truth in that, but what if it turns out that you’re beaten time and time again while you’re driving your heart out? That gnaws at your self-confidence and then things go from bad to worse: mistakes creep in, motivation seeps away. His predecessors Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, and Sergio Pérez all bit the dust. Only Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo were a match for Verstappen, but the latter lost his way on the track and for some reason, Red Bull does not want to bring back the former.
Bottas is the Ideal Second Man
Let me lend a hand to the HR department with the advice that the job profile should contain this one rule: sought, driver with high motivation but low ambition. A bit of a contradiction, but they do exist. The men who think: I earn well, win my races, and at the end of the year, a bonus awaits for the constructors’ title. In the current era, he goes by the name Valtteri Bottas.
I’m not a fan of Bottas, quite the contrary: I find him a colorless mileage eater. Apparently, he feels the same way, so he upgraded his appearance with a mustache and a mullet. A somewhat sad way to distinguish yourself when you don’t stand out in any way. Just like men who adopt a topknot in the assumption that it suddenly makes them artistic. Bottas 2.0: at the start of his seasons alongside Lewis Hamilton, he liked to present himself this way in the media. He had trained extra hard, learned extra much from how his teammate worked, and was extra motivated. He didn’t need the mustache and mullet yet, because he was going to distinguish himself as a world champion that year.
Disillusioned
It never happened and Bottas 0.0 moved on to Sauber. From there, he watched from a distance as Sergio Pérez, in his first years at Red Bull, also harbored ambitions for the world title. He recognized himself in it, acknowledged that during his time at Mercedes he thought he could win the battle with a top-class driver against better judgment, and concluded that Pérez was in a similar phase of wishful thinking. One illusion poorer, there was one big difference: Pérez mentally collapsed, Bottas continued to perform at the top of his abilities. He didn’t halve in points compared to his teammate, but stayed reasonably close. The ideal second man, especially now that he realizes he is good, but not good enough to beat a top driver.
Lawson still needs to come to that sense of reality. Hopefully, he handles it better than his three predecessors. If not, Red Bull would be wise to overcome their aversion to Bottas, just like me.
