THE TORTURE OF BEING A #2

How to handle being be a number-two driver? Valtteri Bottas is fighting this battle right now – the tug-of-war between ambition and reality, of being in a competitive car and wanting to fight for the title, and the guy in the other car just being better.

You know you can beat him sometimes. But the stars need to be aligned and, realistically, the other guy needs to have had a problem. So, how to deal with that situation?

Mark Webber, veteran of five losing years alongside Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull, used to rage against it. He never accepted his position, and pushed team harmony to breaking point in trying to fight his corner.

Looking back, Webber says: “Valtteri’s handling it a lot better than I did.”

Bottas is doing it more the David Coulthard way. He keeps his head down, rocks the boat as little as possible, and keeps working, hoping for the moment it will come to him.

“His approach is the right approach,” says Coulthard. “If you’re a rational individual, you look at the challenges. There is nothing more he can do than work on every element of what he can see the differences are – consistency of performance; race pace. Qualifying ahead releases your whole Sunday by being the lead car.

“For me, by accepting I wasn’t going to get that consistently, I worked on my starts and race set-up. That allowed me to get some wins from not being on pole. Beyond that, there’s nothing more he can do. If he can look at himself in the mirror and say: ‘I am doing everything humanly possible’, then whatever happens, once he retires, he will retire at peace.”