Bottas acknowledges dominance: 'Hamilton's baseline level is so high'

Valtteri Bottas' career with Mercedes has now officially come to an end and so he will have to make a fresh start with Alfa Romeo next season. The Finn has driven for the German team for five years, but it was a period with mixed feelings.

Bottas secured ten victories, twenty pole positions and has been on the podium a total of 58 times. The 32-year-old driver has shown that he can perform and is fast, but he knows it was not good enough. You need more than one good day and that hasn't always been the case for him.

Still, the former Mercedes driver feels he has learned a lot about himself, both as a person and a driver. Despite that experience, the former Williams driver is not leaving Mercedes with his head held high because of the sky-high expectations. "Where I feel like I failed, obviously I didn’t manage to win the drivers’ championship. But it wasn’t simple alongside Lewis. He always got the upper hand," he tells The Race.

The seven-time world champion has been dominant in the team for years. Hamilton has been the leader of the team and Bottas believes that is down to his consistency. Whereas the Alfa Romeo driver sometimes missed out on opportunities, the Brit rarely had a bad weekend. “The baseline level as a driver like Lewis is so high that it is quite tricky to outperform him all the time.”