Bottas unfazed by ‘bull****’ rumors about his future with Cadillac

Valtteri Bottas says he finds it easy to ignore “bull***” rumors about his future at Cadillac, after the team traced the cause for his challenging weekend in Canada.

Reports surfaced online suggesting that Cadillac was already considering replacing Bottas after a tough Canadian Grand Prix during which the Finn qualify 0.8s off teammate Sergio Perez in both sessions, with some attempting to link Colton Herta with a race seat despite his lack of a Super License. Bottas says he knows he has the full backing of Cadillac and was unaffected by the speculation, and the team also denied the rumors.

“Well, it's part of the sport, it's not the first time I faced those kind of rumors,” Bottas said. “It's a bit of a shame that somebody just makes up complete bull****, but that's normal in this sport. And I know my situation, team knows my situation, they support me 100%, so that's why from my side it was OK in the end… [it was just for] headlines, clicks, that's my theory.”

Perez was critical of Cadillac’s operational procedures after Canada, and Bottas said he has faced similar issues, some of which were linked to his struggles in Montreal.

“We still have another meeting later this afternoon, but I caught up with the team last week about it, and we could see issues both on the PU side and the car build side," he said. "That's as much as I can give you, but we can see reasons, which is good to see.

“We need to keep working on the quality, on how we build the car, how we fit all the parts, and so on… I’m confident, I think we understand now what has been going wrong.

“I think it's understandable. In testing this year, in Melbourne this year, some of the tools we were using for the first time, the set-up tools and all of those kind of things. It's kind of expected that we can lack a bit of consistency for now, but at least from each weekend we're really understanding these things, and we can improve those.

“Of course I'm expecting us to make another step on everything this weekend, and also with some upgrades, like the new rear wing, hopefully that will give us a bit more again.”

The Finn also believes the upcoming race schedule will allow both him and the team to improve quickly, following back-to-back Sprint weekends, and a run of three in the first five rounds this season.

“We definitely need these normal weekends now, with more practice time, to really get a proper understanding of the car, a bit more consistency, and now we're going to get a bit more rhythm," he said.

"Same for me, like driving-wise, actually getting consistent time in the car is going to be nice. I’m looking forward to this block of races, should be good for us, and I think we're going to learn a lot in the next couple of months.”