Formula 1 | “It wasn’t quite healthy” – Valtteri Bottas reveals on TV that the formula triggered an eating disorder

F1 driver Valtteri Bottas opens its door For Maria Veitola Maria Veitola in Yökylä in the latest season of the series.

During his home presentation vacation, Bottas tells Veitola about his formula dreams from his youth and what it was like when he had already reached the top.

Bottas started his F1 career in 2013, but already a year later he killed himself by training too much and eating too little.

“I trained myself to pain physically and mentally. It got out of hand, and it became an addiction. No eating disorder was officially diagnosed, but it was definitely there,” Bottas reveals in the program.

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“I needed a psychologist to help me recover, whose first assessment of me was that I’m almost like a robot.”

Bottas steamed between long runs he only ate broccoli and continued training. He hid all this even from his coach.

“It wasn’t very healthy. I wanted to be the best, and I thought I had to do that. If the team says that I have to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weigh 73 kilos, then they will do everything for that.”

Around the same time, his teammate from the past years Jules Bianchi died in an F1 accident.

Due to his own overloaded state, it was difficult for Bottas to process everything that happened.

“I needed a psychologist to help me recover, whose first assessment of me was that I’m almost like a robot who only wants to reach his goal and has no feelings at all. It startled me. It’s true that at that time I had no other life than F1.”

Bottas and Veitola also play in the episode Mika Häkkinenwho has been an important background figure in Bottas’ career.

They talk about how little mental support F1 racers get and how they are left very alone mentally.

Häkkinen recalls how it took him seven years before he got his first F1 win.

During that time, he had a constant mental battle with himself, wallowing in self-accusations and wondering what he was doing wrong. Finally, he asked himself for help.

Bottas says having resorted to outside help again before last season. He switched from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo at that time.

“Last season was more difficult again, when the future was on the line and I didn’t know which team I would drive for. It was a big threshold to ask for outside help,” says Bottas.

“That’s what you think when you’re such a tough guy that you don’t need help, that I can take care of things by looking in the mirror. But a professional knows how to ask the right questions and open a lot of locks.”

The need for mental help is not discussed with teammates.

“I’m not the only one there who sometimes has a hard time.”

even second the place at Mercedes was a very difficult place for Bottas. He drove in the Mercedes team from 2017 to 2021.

“For such a competitive nature, it was hard to accept. Only in the last year I was able to accept that Lewis Hamilton was a better driver. I always wondered how I could beat him and win the world championship. It was quite an exhausting five years,” says Bottas in the episode.

Bottas reflects that he should have known how to be kinder to himself at the time and give himself more time during the first couple of years at Mercedes.

“I wanted to win everything right away, and then when it didn’t happen, it was hard to accept.”

Veitola tells, that it was that conversation that he remembered best from the visit, because Bottas said that he was left mentally alone in his career. Even at the top of F1, you don’t get enough mental support.

“While making this program, I was shocked time and time again about how alone people are and how the difficulty of getting help extends even to such a world,” says Maria Veitola.

Bottas’ common wife, racing cyclist Tiffany Cromwell reveals to Veitola that the change of team affected Bottas’ well-being.

The man became much more relaxed as soon as he switched from Mercedes to Alfa Romeo 2022. There is also significantly less criticism from outside now.

In Yökylä Maria Veitola on Thursdays 2.2. starting at 21:00 on the MTV3 channel and in MTV Katsomo. The Bottas episode can be watched on MTV Katsomo on Thursday 2.2.