The Audi-owned Sauber team's 2025 Formula 1 line-up has finally been completed, with Valtteri Bottas on his way out and McLaren F1 junior and Formula 2 standings leader Gabriel Bortoleto in.
But has the team treated Bottas unfairly?
Bottas spent five seasons at Mercedes, finishing runner-up to Lewis Hamilton twice and helping the team clinch five constructors’ championships between 2017 and 2021. The Finn bagged 58 podiums for the team, including nine grand prix wins and 20 pole positions - having made it to Q3 in every appearance for Mercedes.
When George Russell was promoted to Mercedes, Bottas joined Alfa Romeo - now Sauber - and his run of 12 consecutive seasons as a full-time F1 driver will end in 2025 when Bortoleto takes his seat alongside fellow new Sauber hire Nico Hulkenberg.
This comes despite a 2024 in which Bottas has performed head and shoulders above team-mate Zhou Guanyu, after Zhou had seemed to put him under some pressure the year before.
Why did Audi pick Bortoleto over Bottas?
“I did think that keeping Valtteri Bottas would be a perfectly legitimate route for Sauber and Audi to take,” said Scott Mitchell-Malm on The Race F1 Podcast. “Because I think Bottas has performed very well this year.
“But the problem is thatNico Hulkenberg - who has been great most of the year for Haas - was signed up back in April. He is 37. Bottas is 35.
"So even if they only had them together for one year by the end of next season, Bottas will be 36; Hulkenberg will be 38.
“It's not exactly future-proof as a line-up if they went in that direction. And this is a long-term project, not just in terms of Audi's commitment to Formula 1, but just in terms of how much time is going to be required to get anywhere near the level that Audi expects its F1 team to be.”
Mitchell-Malm added that, after a season that's tracking to end up point-less, Sauber might need something to “energise” and that something can be the driver line-up - which is why highly-rated Brazilian Bortoleto, 20, has been signed from McLaren for 2025.
Sauber might well have been influenced by the performance of other young F1 drivers this season: Liam Lawson, Ollie Bearman, and Franco Colapinto.
“[Audi] clearly didn't trust Sauber’s own Formula 2 champion, Theo Pourchaire, to fulfil that role. So it has looked elsewhere. And Bortoletto ticks a lot of boxes,” said Mitchell-Malm.
Bortoleto, who is managed by Fernando Alonso’s agency, has undergone a testing of previous cars programme with McLaren and intense simulator work, too, and he’s highly-rated within the F2 paddock. With a stable F1 line-up in Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, McLaren felt it could afford to let its junior driver go - and Audi snapped him up.
Of course, it only came to that once Audi swung and missed out - "embarrassingly" so, in Mitchell-Malm's eyes - on Carlos Sainz's services and then lost a potential fallback target in Esteban Ocon to Haas.
Did Bottas deserve better?
This year’s Sauber has been uncompetitive throughout 2024 with both Bottas and Zhou Guanyu still without points, but Bottas has so far outqualified his team-mate 20-1 and outraced him 12-6.
Fundamentally, Zhou hasn’t proven to be a valuable benchmark for teams to evaluate Bottas. Yet the Finn has barely put a foot wrong this season.
“I think it's very unfortunate that Bottas has dropped off the grid and borderline unfair that he hasn't been able to find a way to extend his F1 career because this isn't ‘Logan Sargeant getting dropped mid-season because he's underperforming’,” said Mitchell-Malm.
“It's not even really [comparable to] Daniel Ricciardo, because I would say that Bottas has been consistently more convincing through his Sauber stint and especially this season than Ricciardo was. Ditto Kevin Magnussen at Haas or Sergio Perez at Red Bull - if he ends up on the scrapheap there, as it looks like he might.”
Podcast host Edd Straw concurred, adding that Bottas batted off questions about his focus and drive last year and has kept his chin up this year.
He compared the situation to that of Toyota in 2002, its debut F1 season - at the end of which it also went for a complete driver fresh start.
“I get the impression that within Audi, there'd been a little bit of blaming the drivers going on," said Straw.
"And I do feel that's a little bit of a mistake because, remember, Toyota in their first year - one of the things they did was blame Allan McNish and Mika Salo for the fact that their car was hopeless, and clear them out.
“Then 'oh, shockingly, it's not making a huge difference!'
"So you've got to be careful of that. I feel a degree of sympathy.”
There have been occasions when Bottas could have scored but didn’t. Sauber’s own execution was the culprit in two major occasions: in Australia he was in contention for points when a 30-second pitstop halted his advance; in Japan another slow pitstop cost him a shot at the top 10.
Come Miami in May, Bottas's race engineer was changed without the team consulting him. He had only found out a couple of days before he arrived at the venue, and the cracks in his relationship with Sauber - albeit under different management at that point - really started to show.
Both Straw and Mitchell-Malm agreed Bottas could have been treated better by Sauber in regards to his future.
“You should always be transparent with your drivers. And I think that's not necessarily been the case. You never know what's said behind closed doors, but I'm not completely convinced that was done right,” said Straw.
Mitchell-Malm added: “Something's not quite there, is it? There's a little bit of misalignment somewhere in terms of who was the right pick for ‘25, because this got dragged that way too long for something that was a super-easy decision."
“I do wonder if there's not full alignment between Audi and the team side. I'm globally a bit concerned about this project in terms of the way Audi's handling it,” replied Straw, who also questioned whether Hulkenberg would have been Audi’s ultimate choice - given he was signed when previous boss Andreas Seidl was at the helm rather than Mattia Binotto.
Where does Audi’s decision leave Bottas?
Whatever movement is still to happen in regards to the make-up of the 2025 grid, Bottas won't be part of it as a full-timer:
Straw said: "That's always the danger if you are everyone's second, third, fourth, fifth choice. You may never be their first choice, no matter what else.
“But it was ridiculous because at one point there were something like four different teams that Bottas was having conversations with. So if Sainz hadn't signed for Williams, Bottas would have gone to Williams. It could have gone very, very differently.
“I'm not going to have monstrous amounts of sympathy for him because he's had a long and successful grand prix career. Valtteri Bottas will be fine. But I do still think he has something to offer in Formula 1.”
Bottas’s most likely 2025 destination in F1 is a Mercedes reserve role - where he would remain to see if the driver market allows him to mount a Hulkenberg-like comeback. Otherwise, he could venture outside F1 and pursue other motorsport.
The Finn has taken part in rallying and the Race of Champions - as well as testing an Extreme E car.
Or, he could swap four wheels for two and pursue his passion for cycling. There’s always coffee, too…
Zhou's woeful year
Zhou is also out of an F1 seat for 2025 - and unlike Bottas, he never really seemed in the frame for extending his full-time career with a new deal for next year.
“I have some sympathy because there have been some good flashes in his time at Sauber,” said Mitchell-Malm.
“And this year, when there was a chance to build on the promise of 2023 in parts, just seems to have completely robbed him of any confidence and standing within the paddock. Because I do think there's times this year where Zhou’s been made to look a lot worse than he actually is as an F1 prospect.”
Straw added that it will be a “shame” that F1 won’t have a Chinese driver in 2025 given the incredible response Zhou enjoyed at his home race this season - and feels that, perhaps, with two extra seats on the grid this situation might have been avoidable.
The fact remains that Sauber will field Hulkenberg and Bortoleto and as they're both on multi-year deals, they're also form Audi's first F1 line-up - one representing a solid mix of experience and youth.
But it's one that comes at the expense of a driver who, at least in 2024, has done as well as his paymasters could've reasonably asked of him.