Valtteri Bottas says repeated team orders at Mercedes pushed him close to walking away from Formula 1. In columns for The Players’ Tribune he revisited the 2018 season, recalling when Mercedes strategist James Vowles told him to slow and yield the lead at the Russian Grand Prix and when he was instructed not to attack Lewis Hamilton at the German Grand Prix. Bottas says those episodes left him depressed and considering retirement during the 2018-19 winter break, and after a long walk in a Finnish forest he reversed course, signed a contract extension in July 2018 and opened 2019 with a dominant win in Australia.

Bottas also says he nearly quit again after being replaced following the 2024 season. He spent all of 2025 out of the sport before returning to the 2026 F1 grid with newcomer Cadillac. He frames his comeback as a desire to help build Cadillac by supplying experience and stability to a new outfit that is still seeking its first championship point. He marked his first race for Cadillac at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai with a 13th-place finish, and wrote that Toto Wolff privately approached him after the race to praise the job he and Cadillac had done.

In a first-person feature titled “Born Crazy” and other Players’ Tribune pieces, Bottas traces the ups and downs of his career, including early efforts to help Williams, three years at Alfa Romeo, a spell as a Mercedes reserve, and the seasons that followed. He reminds readers of his record, 10 Grand Prix wins, two world championship runner-up finishes, 20 pole positions and 67 podiums, and he blends race detail, career reflection and interpersonal context to explain how low points, cancelled races and near-retirement decisions shaped his determination to return to the grid with Cadillac.