Alpine Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly has responded to rumours linking Valtteri Bottas to a full-time seat on the team.
Bottas, who lost out on a contract extension with Sauber at the end of 2024, currently serves as the Mercedes reserve driver. Since his exit from an F1 seat, the Finnish driver’s management has been engaging in conversations for a potential return.
“I think probably there has been some discussions,” Bottas explained on F1’s Beyond The Grid podcast about Alpine in June. “I haven’t really been involved, but I do have a management team who are always in the background seeing what is out there. They do have a Mercedes power unit for the future, which I think is a good call.
“They’re on their second driver this year and I think the next races will show how that goes. Again, I think on a struggle street, let’s say, experience can always help.
“But there’s lots of politics in this sport. I don’t have tens of millions to pay for a seat. Depends on the team but I do have some personal partners that could potentially join me, but still, not to an extent to some others. Let’s wait and see a few races and see how things go. You never know if something opens up.”
Current Alpine driver Gasly has since played down the rumours while speaking to the media during the British Grand Prix weekend.
“I think it’s a lot of noise. I think the car, I’m showing every weekend what we can do with it, doing a very good job on Saturdays and putting it in places that on paper we all agree we should not really be.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“It’s just tricky, it’s a very tight midfield and we are at the back of it. There will always be noise, especially considering what happened earlier in the year, but I think at the end of the day we should just focus on the work ahead.
“It’s going to be a long season. We don’t have upgrades, the car is not in the best place, but all of us need to focus on what we’ve got to do and try and do it the best way that we can.”
Read Also:
In this article
Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics
Subscribe to news alerts