Bottas: Weird to see Hamilton and Mercedes struggle

While Bottas has moved on to a happier place at Alfa Romeo, things at his previous home are not good, as Mercedes continue to struggle with this year's car, while his previous teammate Hamilton qualified a shocking 16th for the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but later finished tenth.

Bottas reflected on the difficulties his former team are enduring, and how it felt look at the situations in the Silver Camp from afar.

"It's weird to see," he told the media in Jeddah after qualifying when Hamilton was knocked out from Q1. "I would guess he had some kind of issue, I don't know."

"It is surprising to see them struggling, but it's also nice to be able to battle with them," the Finn added.

Bottas qualified eighth in Saudi Arabia, and scored point for Alfa Romeo on his debut in Bahrain where he finished sixth.

"I think this was kind of the best case scenario for our first season together that I could ever imagine, with the information I had," the ten-time race winner reflected.

However it was a different story in Saudi Arabia, as despite qualifying eighth around the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, Bottas had to retire from the race with less than 15 laps remaining, due to cooling issues on his C42.

"It’s a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least," Bottas said in the team report.

"The engine temperatures kept rising, we need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn’t want to lose the engine. It’s how racing goes, we now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on," he explained.

"Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles: now let’s make sure we get back to scoring in Australia," Bottas mainatained.

But despite his troubles in Jeddah, the 32-year-old has no regrets and happy with his decision to join the Hinwil squad.

"I'm really happy with the decision I made, and I'm happy overall as well. So yeah, [I'm] enjoying it," he concluded.