Alfa Romeo team principal Frederic Vasseur compared Valtteri Bottas to old protégé Charles Leclerc, saying that both of them are good communicators.
Leclerc was part of Alfa Romeo (then Sauber) during his first years in F1. He excelled with the team and earned a big move to Ferrari. The Monegasque also had a great relationship with his team and especially with his team boss.
Vasseur has worked with Leclerc before, under the ART branding. They won the championship with Leclerc in 2016, five years after the team boss and Bottas won the GP3 series.
Having worked with both drivers, Vasseur compared Bottas to Leclerc, saying that he had a great relationship with both drivers.
“It’s important to have a good personal relationship, full trust, and a good understanding of the other,” he told Motorsport.com.
“I saw it with Charles in the past: when you work together in the junior series, you know the guy for a long, long time. You don’t need to speak too much to understand what he is expecting.
“The relationship that you can build in the junior series is completely different to the relationship in F1. We are much more in contact.”
Bottastic
“When you want to find positive factors in the junior series, you can always find them,” he spoke of Bottas.
“But I think the summary was a good one. When everything is perfect, he’s able to be flying. He went faster than Lewis (Hamilton) in some weekends.
“He did some mega good events on the last part of the season (in 2021). Also perhaps the fact that we signed and he has a new project, he was a bit more relaxed. I hope that it helped him.”
Read more: Vasseur slams FIA for not giving Norris a penalty – “Can’t change the rules because he is nice”