Formula One’s silly season started off with a bang in February, long before preseason testing, with the announcement of Lewis Hamilton heading to Ferrari next year.
It created a roller-coaster drivers market, and as the sport prepares for the final stretch of six races in eight weeks to close out the season, the 2025 driver lineups are still unfinished. With both drivers in a contract year, Sauber made one of the earlier moves, signing Nico Hülkenberg in April. But since then, it’s been fairly quiet, much of the grid waiting to see where Carlos Sainz would end up in 2025. The Spaniard ultimately chose Williams over Alpine and Sauber, which will become Audi in 2026.
The team has undergone recent management changes. Former Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto is now the chief operating and chief technical officer, joining in August and replacing Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann, who previously oversaw the F1 project. And Red Bull’s Jonathan Wheatley will become Audi’s team principal, joining sometime next year after serving gardening leave.
With Binotto now at the helm, he will make the call on who will fill Sauber’s second seat, weighing the experience of its current drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, against young talent.
“We have said already in Monza that he’s taking charge of all the dossiers, and the drivers’ is of course one of the most important ones,” team representative Alessando Alunni Bravi said this month at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. “We are evaluating all the options to see which is the best balance between a short-term experience and medium-, long-term, maybe young talent. There are potential candidates on both sides. Valtteri is a strong driver for our team. We know him very well. He has been with the team already for three years, and of course he’s one on top of our list. But there are other opportunities.
“We are just looking at all the pros and cons, and Mattia will take a decision based not only on 2025, but also the medium- (and) long-term strategy for the Audi F1 project.”
Sauber’s current drivers
Bottas and Zhou have endured a less-than-stellar season, to put it nicely. They remain the only current F1 drivers who haven’t scored a point this season (the other is Logan Sargeant, who was dropped from Williams after the Dutch GP weekend). It started out with a problem with the pit stops, and now, the car can be finicky and sensitive to certain conditions. In Singapore, Zhou finished P15, and Bottas was right behind him.
Having a car that lacks competitiveness does complicate matters when you’re in a contract year.
“I’ve been happy about how I feel in the car and my speed,” Bottas told The Athletic. “Obviously, with the car we have at the moment, it’s difficult to show that. It’s not easy to get the results, and for people, it’s not easy to see what I’m actually doing in the car. In this sport, you always want to be ahead of your teammate, which I’m consistently doing that, which for me, is also important. But in this sport, there’s always improvements, and there’s no fundamental issues, let’s say, that I’m having, but always trying to learn more.”
Bottas brings extensive experience to the table, having been part of Mercedes’ championship era for multiple years. He made his F1 debut in 2013, driving for Williams, and made the jump to the Silver Arrows in 2017. Bottas won 10 grands prix and stood on 58 podiums from 2017-2021 with Mercedes. But since parting ways, he hasn’t reached a podium.
“He has a strong technical knowledge, so his contribution is as important trackside as in the development of the team,” Alunni Bravi told The Athletic. “We started with Valtteri three years ago, and he really helped the team to steer the technical direction. We develop our simulator that is now a very important designing tool. So I think he’s a driver that can be really consistent and also is helping the team, not just in terms of performance but also in terms of how to develop the car.”
Meanwhile, Zhou joined the grid (and then-Alfa Romeo) in 2022 and has only raced in 62 grands prix, his highest finish ever being eighth in Canada in 2022. This season, he hasn’t started higher than P14 at Silverstone (the one time this year he’s outqualified Bottas), and his best finish was P11 in Bahrain.
Alunni Bravi pointed out that Zhou is a younger driver and “doing a good job,” however, he added, “I think that his learning curve is not yet completed in a Formula One (car).”
The teammate comparison is the biggest benchmark in this sport, and right now, Bottas is 11-7 in race results and 17-1 in qualifying for this season.
Young talent
Sauber could look outside of its current drivers and opt for youth, considering it needs to look at the mid- and long-term future.
Williams’ Franco Colapinto currently doesn’t have a seat for next season, with the team signing Alex Albon and Sainz, but his performance since jumping into the deep end at Monza makes him hard to ignore. The Argentine outqualified Albon in Baku, something Sargeant couldn’t do in his F1 stint, and helped Williams score its first double points finish of the season.
“He’s done an absolutely outstanding job. Just really jumped straight into it, two feet first, and has been swimming ever since,” Williams team boss James Vowles said about the rookie during a news conference after FP1 in Singapore. “But he’s doing brilliantly well. And to score points in your second ever grand prix, to be a few seconds behind Alex, is extraordinary.”
Vowles later said Colapinto has exceeded expectations and is delivering. A few days later, the young driver continued to stand out. His opening-lap move got people talking as he dove through a gap and went four-wide in one overtake. Sergio Pérez struggled to pass the Williams driver at one point during the race, leading him to say over the radio, “He’s very good. Difficult to pass, Colapinto.”
While Colapinto is a late addition to the grid for this season, the question is whether he’s in contention for the Sauber seat.
“He is a racing driver, and I think he’s already demonstrated in just a few races that he belongs on the grid. What we’ve already said is we’re very open-minded,” Vowles said. “We’re waiting, in that circumstance, for Audi or Sauber to come to us and say, what do you want, what are you interested in? And from there, we can then discuss what it actually means as an implication. But the first stage is more an open discussion.”
And then there’s F2 points leader Gabriel Bortoleto, who is part of the McLaren Driver Development Programme and a protégé of Fernando Alonso. Bortoleto is part of the two-time world champion’s management company, joining in late 2022. Last year, the Brazilian won the Formula Three title, securing six podium finishes and two victories in his debut season.
“He’s an incredible talent and a very humble person as well, which I think that’s the biggest thing that we need to work on. He’s a hard worker, apart from his talent, and I think that’s why in Formula Three and Formula Two (he) had this much progress,” Alonso said in Baku. “I think also he’s someone that is taking things very seriously as well, which at that age is never a guarantee. …
“It’s a matter of time that he gets to F1.”
While in Singapore, Alonso elaborated some on Bortoleto and the pressure he is facing. He reiterated that the young driver is a pure rookie while others have done F1 testing, yet he’s leading the championship with two race weekends to go.
“We don’t need to take any shortcuts that will compromise the development of his talent,” Alonso said. “He needs to get to F1 in the right time when he’s totally prepared, and in the right time, right environment. That’s the biggest challenge. To combine the pressure and the motivation to get to F1 to the common sense of when is the best time.”
When a decision will be made
Cue the ‘Jeopardy!’ music.
When asked if there is a deadline on making a decision, Alunni Bravi said in Baku, “It’s not about the deadline because, of course, we are not opportunistic. Now that there is only one seat available, we want to take time. It’s more to assess everything, every aspect, and to take a right decision. I think there is no rush, but we want to tick this box also soon. So, I think it will be a matter of the next weeks.”
That answer was given on Sept. 13, and now F1 is on a fall break with no race weekends until Austin and the U.S. Grand Prix in mid-October. It’s likely that a decision is imminent, and Bottas is feeling positive about the ongoing talks.
“We’ve been in talks now for a while with Mattia since he joined and Alessandro as well. I can’t really share much,” Bottas said in Singapore. “I might know a bit more than other people, but let’s just focus on the racing this weekend. At least there’s then a good time between this and the next race to continue the talks, and then we’ll see what happens.”
(Top photo of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu: Lars Baron — Formula 1 / Formula 1 via Getty Images)
