Valtteri Bottas hopes Lewis Hamilton will “bounce back” from his difficult first season at Ferrari, but ultimately believes only time will tell if the British driver can recover to race-winning ways.<\/p>\n
The seven-time F1 drivers’ champion made the switch from Mercedes over the winter, riding to Maranello on a wave of expectation and optimism.<\/p>\n
However, the partnership has thus failed to live up to the anticipation, and if Hamilton does not score a podium at the next round, the United States Grand Prix, he will beat Didier Pironi’s unfortunate record for the longest start to a Ferrari tenure without a trip to the rostrum.<\/p>\n
The high points for the 40-year-old this campaign have both come in sprints, with victory in Shanghai and third place in Miami.<\/p>\n
Bottas, who was team-mate to Hamilton at Mercedes between 2017 and 2021, has been quick to point out how challenging moving teams can be.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Crash.net, the 10-time grand prix winner said: “I hope he [Hamilton] will bounce back. But time will show if he will.<\/p>\n
“He’s had some good moments [at Ferrari], a bit of bad luck as well. But it’s tricky. It’s not easy changing a team after such a long time at Mercedes, being kind of the lead man.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very different environment that he’s working with now. I can’t really say much more than say time will show if things go better or not. But I really hope so because I think he deserves still great results in this sport.”<\/p>\n
Having spent 2025 on the sidelines as reserve driver at the eight-time F1 constructors’ champions, Bottas will join Cadillac next year as he returns to full-time racing.<\/p>\n
That will mark the third time the Finnish driver has moved teams in his F1 career, but he does not feel his experience is a like-for-like comparison with Hamilton’s, given he has only ever joined new teams at the start of a regulations cycle.<\/p>\n
“It depends on which team you go to and how different is the car,” said the former Williams, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo\/Stake driver.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had my experiences, but normally it’s been actually during a regulation change. So for me it\u2019s hard to predict.”<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old added: “I don’t know inside the team how they operate, how they work and what the struggles are. So I can’t really say much more than that, really.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valtteri Bottas hopes Lewis Hamilton will “bounce back” from his difficult first season at Ferrari, but ultimately believes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-209118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}