A biography for Valtteri Bottashasn’t been written yet.
“With F1, it's really a combination of many things. You have to have good endurance, good strength in certain muscles, you need to be fast, have good reactions and good decisions. It's not as simple as one thing. You need to be a complete athlete.”
“If you work hard it's only a matter of time before things start to go right.”
“In this sport if you want to win you need to be selfish, it is that kind of sport, even though it is a team sport you need to think about yourself.”
“Every year you learn as a person, about yourself, what works for you and what doesn't.”
“In Formula 1, the neck is really important. There's a lot of force that's going to your head. We also have a helmet and it's not that light. When it's all about g-force, all of that extra weight in the helmet compounds and puts more and more pressure.”
“You never want to be behind your team-mate at the end of the year, that's definitely always going to be my goal.”
“What we need to make sure we do as a team is build the quickest car on the grid - if we have the quickest car, we can do it!”
“I think with racing, you never stop improving. If you want to improve, you will.”
“Every athlete, every person is individual.”
“Of course, when you start in pole, winning is the only target you have.”
“When I was 12 there was a big shift in mindset and I realised that if I want to get something out of it then I need to work hard and focus all my energy just for this sport and that's when I started training and taking things more seriously. I became a lot more self-critical and analysed the driving more and more, and that was when I was 12.”
“My approach to the race is definitely just trying to win the race.”
“I've had a lot of support from back home, starting way back in karting and since then I have been lucky to have been supported by some great Finnish companies.”
“Racing can still be good even though you don't push others off the track.”
“Finns love if their athletes do well, then they support.”
“In general, I like healthy foods. Everything that's natural and clean.”
“During my childhood my family risked a lot financially. They put every single penny they could into my racing and also their free time was completely compromised.”
“We need to make sure F1 stays the quickest category of all, and GP2 is not that far away, so that's a little bit worrying.”
“Sometimes it would be nice not to be recognizable!”
“It was when I first tried a go-kart in '96. I saw a go-kart race locally, and that got me excited about it, and I wanted to try one. When I got to try one, I just loved the speed and after that it became more about how to improve the lap time and all the details and that.”