Born Crazy

Where do we start? 

When my life changed, I guess. 

Zoom in from the drone. 

Finland. Rural. Cold. Reindeers. (No reindeers, actually). Mostly factories.

I was six years old. Little Valtteri. No mullet yet. Just a blonde bowl cut. Straight across the forehead. Not great. 

It was a normal day. I was out shopping with my father. Groceries or something. Boring. We were driving back home, and I saw this sign on the side of the road that said Go-Kart Championship. 

I don’t even think I knew what it meant. We were not a racing family. My dad cleaned industrial warehouses. But for some reason, the sign called out to me. 

I begged my dad to turn around and take me to the track. 

I wonder what would have happened if he had said no. Maybe I would be a plumber. Or an underwear model. 

But he turned around. 

When I saw all the kids flying around the track, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was like Mario Kart, but it was actually real. I couldn’t wait to get in the seat. Only one problem. Big problem. I was small. I couldn’t reach the pedals. Damn. 

“Do you have an extra small kart?” 

“That is the extra small kart.” 

My father even went and got a pillow to put behind my back, and I was stretching and stretching my foot down to the floor…. 

“Oh come on! Grow! I command you to grow!” 

But I still couldn’t touch the gas pedal.

I remember I was so sad because it was the late autumn, right before the start of the Finnish winter. When you’re a kid, time goes by 10 times more slowly, right? So I was thinking, “My god, I just want to fall asleep for the next four months like a bear.” 

Every morning.… “Dad, did I get taller? I think I felt a centimeter in the night.”

My grandfather was an oat farmer, and he told me, “If you eat your porridge every day, I promise by the spring, when the snow melts, you’ll reach the pedals.” 

It was like a fable or something. Honestly, it sounded like bull****. But I was desperate. So I ate the porridge. 

I ate so much porridge that my mom got sick of making it for me, and I taught myself how to cook it. I had oats coming out of my ears. But you know what? My grandpa was right. I grew. The snow melted. The track opened. I ran to the smallest kart, and I stretched my foot down, and I could actually touch that damn pedal. 

Pressing down on the gas and feeling the kart come to life. Wow. Top 5 moment for me. I still get goosebumps. I don’t know if people are born to do something. But if they are, then I was born to race. 

Was the porridge really magic? No. Probably I just got a hell of a lot of fiber. But it’s the lesson you have to learn if you want to have a seat in F1. The monotonous, everyday grind pays off. In Finland, we have a word for it. Sisu. It’s like a special kind of grit. A second wind for torture, I guess you could call it. But there’s a very fine line between obsession and addiction. 

You know, it’s interesting, because one day somebody asked me, “Valtteri, there’s only 20 seats in F1. How do you get there?”

And the answer is that you have to be completely out of your mind. 

You cannot be rational. It is essential to be crazy. 

I remember when I was like 11 years old, racing started to get expensive. Or at least expensive for my family. We simply couldn’t do it on our own. So after school, my dad and I would drive all over town and go into these little tool shops trying to get my first sponsorship.

I would go up to the counter and say, “Hi, I’m Valtteri, and I’m 11 years old. I want to be an F1 driver. We need some new tires for my kart and we’re looking for a sponsor.”

Some old guy would be looking at us like, “A sponsor? For your go-kart?”

“Well, I can put a little sticker for your tool shop on my helmet.”

In Finland, this is a crazy thing to do. You don’t go around asking people for money. You definitely don’t say out loud that you want to be an F1 driver. But for some reason, it worked. We got sponsorships. Just a little money or some donated tires. Enough to let me travel around in my dad’s old cleaning van and keep competing. We were just normal people. I actually studied to be a car mechanic in case F1 didn’t work out. (I still have my papers, in case it still doesn’t.) We did not have the money to pursue my dream, but we pursued it anyway. 

I’ll never forget the first time I got introduced to the culture of F1. I had just won my first season in single-seaters for Formula Renault in 2008 and a few management companies wanted to sign me. Six or seven approached me, and I needed the money to keep going. It was a blessing from the sky. 

And it was quite funny because I had been talking to the one and only Mr. Toto Wolff, who was just getting into management at that time. He wanted to sign me. I liked what he said. But then one of my childhood heroes called me. Mika Häkkinen. A Finnish legend. He was working with Didier Coton, and they wanted to sign me as well. 

I couldn’t decide between them. 

I called a meeting with them all, and I said, “Guys, I can’t decide.” 

They said, “You can’t decide?”

I said, “I can’t decide.” 

“You can’t decide.”

“I can’t decide.”

They all looked at each other and said, “OK, give us a few days.” 

They came back a week later and said, “Alright, we’re joining forces. Should we do this?”

I called the other management companies and told them, “Sorry, I had to go with Toto and Mika.” 

Most of them were cool. But one of the companies was very high up in F1, and the guy actually told me, “OK, that’s fine. But it’s unfortunate for you.” 

I said, “For me? Why?”

He said, “Well, because we are going to make your life very, very difficult. Your journey to F1 is going to be very hard now. You made the wrong decision.” 

I was shocked, obviously. There were no cameras around. The guy was not performing for TV or something. He was really trying to scare me. I was 19 years old. I had no money. No connections. I was just some kid. It should have worked, honestly. 

But instead, I just thought: OK, you’ve shown me who you are. Have a nice day. See you in F1.

Two years later, I signed with Williams as a test driver. Then two years after that, I got my seat. I was the real deal. I was an F1 driver. And I was the most boring F1 driver in the world. Sometimes I’ll be on YouTube and I’ll come across an old interview with me. It’s horrifying. I am not saying anything. Just talking about the car, like a robot. It is really nice actually if you’re struggling to sleep. You can put me on in the background like those fireplace videos.

Valtteri Bottas Calm Relaxing Interview Mix for Sleep 4K 

Back then, my entire identity was racing. I did not give a damn about anything else. It’s not a problem until it’s a problem.

And in 2014, it became a big problem. 

OK, now the silly Finnish guy has to get a little bit serious. I won’t bore you, don’t worry. I am not going to cry here. We don’t have to play the dramatic music. 

But yeah….. Basically, I started starving myself. 

It started with a simple diet. After my rookie season, we went on winter break, and the Williams team was predicting an overweight car for 2014. This was back when there was no seat-plus-driver weight minimum, so the team suggested that I lose five kilos. If you put a clear goal like that in front of me, I am going to obsess over it. 

When you tell me five kilos in two months, my brain thinks, “Five? Why not 10? We can make the car even quicker.” 

So I started eating steamed broccoli and a bit of steamed cauliflower for almost every meal. I can still smell the broccoli. Wet. Green. Plain. My god. 

It was like a game to me. I would wake up and weigh myself every morning, and when I’d see the number go down, I’d feel a deep satisfaction. I would come back from a 90-minute run and eat my little bowl of steamed broccoli, just to have enough energy so I could go for another 90-minute run. I had this GPS watch, and my coach could track my training, my heart rate, everything. I knew he would think I was burning myself out, so I started taking the watch off and leaving it at home before my second session.

The game became completely consuming. 

After two months of spiraling, my nerves were shot. I would wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning on my own, no alarm. My heart would be beating out of my chest. I’d have all this energy, and I’d think, “This is so great. I have so much extra time in the day to do all my training.” 

I was like a drug addict. “I’ve never felt better!” Ha. Completely delusional. The actual reason I was waking up so early was that my body was in starvation mode. 

The worst part about it was that I would look in the mirror in the morning and I would see my silhouette, and I was so satisfied that my reflection was getting slimmer. It was not about racing anymore.

I don’t even know how much weight I lost in those two months. I looked sick. And of course, after everything I put myself through, we came back from the break and started testing the car, what do you think happened?

The damn thing was actually underweight. Welcome to F1.

I started having these intense foggy spells. Not full-blown panic attacks exactly, but whenever I was in a crowd, I would start to feel dizzy and just …. weird, like I had to get out of there. I wanted to be alone, or in the car. 

The strangest thing is that when I was on the grid, everything felt fine. I was driving very well. I was on the podium, smiling. Then I’d get home, and I looked like a ghost. People around me started to look at me like, “Valtteri, what’s going on?” 

“Me? I’m fine.” 

It got so bad that I actually started having heart palpitations when I was working out, and my coach knew something was wrong. But I was just in denial for so long. I kept telling everybody that I was OK. The turning point didn’t come until a very, very dark day, when my old teammate Jules Bianchi crashed at Suzuka. 

I remember flying back home from Japan, and we all knew that the situation was really bad, and that Jules was in a coma. I was sitting on the plane, and it just felt like nothing mattered to me anymore. I remember my ex-girlfriend texting me wishing me a safe flight, and I just thought, If the plane goes down, who cares? I will disappear and it will be over.

I didn’t find joy in anything anymore. 

When I was back home, I was just so angry and negative about everything, and I remember my ex asking me if I ever worry when I’m in the car, because it’s so dangerous. I said, “No. If I die, I die.”

At that moment, I realized that I genuinely did not care what happened to me anymore. I was having a great season, but it wasn’t enough. Not long after that, I decided to get some help. I started seeing a psychologist, and I finally admitted out loud that I was unwell. That was a big relief, just to say it to somebody. When they took my bloodwork, it was crazy. The numbers were all over the place. My hormones and my nervous system were so out of whack. I had run myself into the ground – mentally and physically. 

My psychologist actually made an interesting observation about me. He said, “You know Valtteri, you don’t seem to have any interests outside of racing. Nothing else that brings you joy. You’re almost like a machine.” 

He was right. My whole identity was the car. 

I kept everything from my team and even my teammates. Even my family didn’t know. In the paddock, you can’t show any weakness. Only my coach and my doctor knew what was going on. It took me almost two years to feel like myself again. It’s funny because if you just watched my races, you probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong. 

For some reason, when I climb into that seat, everything else goes away.

Then in 2016, just as I was really feeling like 100% myself again, the F1 world blew up. 

I’ll never forget, I was in the gym in Abu Dhabi with my trainer, because we were still doing some testing. I hadn’t even left for break yet. My trainer looked down at his phone and he said, “Oh wow, that’s big news. Nico is retiring.” 

It was such a shock to everyone. 

I said, “Nico Rosberg? What??”

He said, “Yes, it’s true. He just announced.” And he showed me the phone. 

I ran straight to my hotel room and called Toto.

I said, “Toto, it’s me. I’m ready.” 

He said, “Valtteri, listen, I know your ability, but relax. Everybody is calling me right now.”

I said, “I’m ready. I’m ready, Toto.” 

He said, “Give me a few days.” 

It took Toto a lot more than a few days, but I got the seat at Mercedes. It was a dream. I felt like I knew myself better. My weight was good. I was healthy. The team was great. Everything was falling into place. First season was good. I started the 2018 season thinking that I was the best driver on the grid, and that I was going to win the championship. 

……… Yeah. I didn’t win a single race. 

Ha. 

There were races that I could have won, but I was told to move over for my teammate. 

“Valtteri, let Lewis through.”

Everybody has heard it by now. 

It’s funny, because Lewis and I are friends. But F1 is such a crazy sport. On one hand, we all want to crush one another. We would do anything to shave off a millisecond from our times. Anything to get an edge. 

But then sometimes, you are told by your bosses that it’s a team sport, and you should slow down and move aside. 

Do you know how badly I wanted to just say no? But I had to be a good teammate. I let him through, and of course he had an incredible season. 

He was the champion. 

I was “the wingman.”

To this day, I have complicated feelings about it. I don’t know how to answer when people ask me about it, because Lewis is an incredible driver and a friend. I have no bad blood with Mercedes or Toto or anyone. But the whole situation almost made me walk away from the sport. 

The old me came back. The negative Valtteri. The obsessive Valtteri. I was reading too many comments on social media, and I started to become very self-loathing. (Finns have a special talent for this.) Thankfully, I had the tools from my experience in 2014 to understand what was happening, and I had plenty of support. 

But I have to be honest ... I was definitely depressed and burnt out. I hated racing. During that winter break before the 2019 season, I did not think that I was going to come back.

That winter break, I made the decision that I was going to retire. 

Then I went for a walk one day in the forest. Back home in Finland, we have these massive, deep forests. You go in, and you’re in another world. It was the middle of winter, and I walked in the deep snow for maybe three hours. I don’t know. For once in my life, I lost track of time. I was in my memories…..

I just thought about all this stuff that I had put out of my mind for years. The sacrifices of my family, the fun times, the bad times…. Just everything. 

I don’t know why, but I had this epiphany. I realized that I was constantly looking in the rearview mirror, thinking about “What if?”

I decided to only think about “What’s next?”

I told myself, “If you’re coming back, you’re coming back as the best driver on the grid.”

I walked out of those woods with a completely different mindset. 

You could see it in my driving. At Melbourne in 2019, I reached that flow state that I’d been searching for ever since I was a little kid racing karts. I took all the negative energy and channeled it into positive aggression. It was beautiful. I won by more than 20 seconds, and it’s funny because what everyone remembers from that race is me on the mic saying, “To whom it may concern, f*** you.” 

I don’t regret saying it, but I’m not sure people really understood what I meant. 

For me, that wasn’t even coming from a place of bitterness anymore. 

It’s almost like I was saying, “Thank you.” 

All that negativity and bull**** early in my career allowed me to get to where I am now.

I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the past few years. I grew the moustache. The mini-mullet. I found a lot of interests outside of racing. I started saying whatever I felt, and not what people wanted to hear. I finally found some balance in my life, and I can honestly say that in 2026, I am the happiest I’ve ever been, and I am the best driver I’ve ever been. 

I feel so much gratitude to be able to write this new chapter with Cadillac. It’s so amazing to be able to build something from the ground up. Everything about this team is refreshing. It’s like a firework of positivity. Coming into work every day is a pleasure. And that is so rare in this world of F1. This is just the beginning of our journey, and that’s what is so exciting to me. 

When you see the work and the passion that people put into this, it’s hard not to get emotional. When we got the car running for the first time at Silverstone, a lot of people on the team were actually crying. I wasn’t even driving that day — it was Sergio doing the test — but I had goosebumps. 

It was like, “OK. We have a car. We actually did this.” 

And then of course it actually has to work on race day. 

I can honestly say that coming back to Melbourne for the opening race this season was the most special moment of my entire career. Even more special than my first race. I think back then I was too nervous to even enjoy it. At Melbourne this year, I was actually taking it all in during the anthems. I was looking at the other 21 drivers all lined up, and it felt like Christmas Eve. 

I just thought…. 

Hell yeah. I’m back. 

Look, I’m still crazy. I still obsess over all of this. I still think I’m the best driver on the grid. But now I have a little bit of perspective to go with it. I can appreciate it all more. 

If you don’t really follow F1 closely, you can’t understand what an incredible task it is to build a car from scratch in the time that we did, and to get it to run properly. 

For us to be able to finish 13th in China in our second race ever is almost like a miracle. 

I remember Toto came up to me after the race, and he was so impressed that we were able to finish the race at all. I could see the respect Toto had for what we’re building here. It meant a lot to me. 

Due to the craziness going on in the world, the flights were a mess, so he actually asked me if I wanted a ride back to Monaco on his private plane. The whole world has seen the photo now, but it was really special to catch up with Toto, Lewis and George on the flight. With all the noise and drama of F1 … well, it was just four human beings hanging out for a few hours. 

A full-circle moment, for sure.

For me, every day that I am behind the wheel is a good day. I want to keep racing for another 6 years. Maybe 7. Maybe 8. 

“Valtteri, you’re crazy.”

Yes. Exactly. 

I love this sport more than I ever have before. I love the smell of the gasoline and the tires. I love the feeling when you get into a new city. I love to sit with the team and just talk about the car for hours. 

It’s been 30 years since I got into that go-kart, and I still love driving in circles as fast as I can. 

Every time I get into the car, I sit down, I lower down my feet, and I just think to myself …. 

Thank God I can still touch the pedals.

Thank God I ate my porridge.