Valtteri Bottas revealed deadlines on his future were pushed back this week, having hoped for a resolution on his F1 2025 seat in the past days.
Two more seats have filled as of Thursday morning, with Pierre Gasly and Lance Stroll extending their stays at Alpine and Aston Martin respectively, though Bottas acknowledged the logjam in the driver market of Carlos Sainz is still the key domino to fall before the rest of the seats fall into place.
Valtteri Bottas reveals F1 2025 deadline delay as wait for seat continues
The former Mercedes driver confirmed he is still in talks with Sauber as he looks to secure a seat on the grid for next year, particularly as the Hinwil-based team prepares to transition over to Audi for 2026.
Bottas is also in talks with others on the grid with available seats, however, and admitted that once Sainz – who is known to have offers from multiple teams – chooses his F1 2025 destination, then he believes the rest of the grid will likely fall into place relatively soon afterwards.
“I was hoping there would be decisions made earlier this week, but deadlines got pushed back again,” Bottas told media including PlanetF1.com in Austria.
“So that’s the situation, so nothing new [from] last weekend.
“I’ve been active, less so in the race weekends because I want to focus on my job, but we need to start scoring – that’s the main thing now.
“But on my days off, I’ve been active with my management with different teams, including this team, obviously, so kind of waiting [for] a piece to fall into a place, and then it should all happen pretty quick.
“I’ve got my priority and my order, which I can’t tell you, but for me it’s pretty clear what I want.”
When challenged and asked why he cannot pursue his priority in the order in which he wants to, Bottas responded: “Because somebody else first has to decide where he’s going and that’s going to decide also, basically how it’s going to go.
“For me, initially, it was a bit weird why one driver would decide everything, but now from my recent understanding there’s reasons for it.
“As you know, this sport is not always fair. There’s other things as well than just pure performance.”
Bottas confirmed his future is “100%” focused on Formula 1 in response to a question from PlanetF1.com, without contingency on other series elsewhere as it stands.
While he’s still sure of his chances of remaining on the grid next year, he is still aware of the possibility of being lost in the shuffle as seats fill up.
“There’s always the danger,” he admitted, “but I’m still confident that I’ll be here next year in one of the seats.
“Like I said I think last weekend, in this sport until you’re signed, nothing’s confirmed – you can always have talks and stuff but until pen hits the paper, nothing is confirmed.
“So there’s that element as well, but I’m not too worried based on at least from my understanding of where we are.”
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