Formula 1: 4 drivers who could drive for Mercedes in 2020
By Asher Fair
Valtteri Bottas
The most obvious candidate to drive for Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate in the 2020 season is Valtteri Bottas, who has driven for the team as the teammate to the 34-year-old Briton in each of the last three seasons.
Bottas signed with Mercedes ahead of the 2017 season following the unexpected retirement of 2016 Formula 1 champion and former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, and he has signed two additional one-year contract extensions to continue driving for the team through the 2019 season.
In addition, the one-year contract extension that Bottas signed last July to continue driving for Mercedes through the 2019 season contains an additional one-year option that could allow him to continue driving for the team through the 2020 season, although it is not known whether this one-year option favors Bottas or the team when it comes to accepting or rejecting it. That said, it is widely speculated that it favors the team.
While Bottas has produced the worst statistics of the three drivers who have driven for the Brackley-based team since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era in the 2014 season both in terms of his race results and his finishes in the driver standings, he still clearly has what it takes to win races, and he certainly has what it takes to simply play the role of a great teammate to Hamilton, as he showed on multiple occasions in the 2018 season alone.
In fact, through the 2019 season’s first two races, Bottas even leads the driver standings over Hamilton with one victory and one second place finish, as he has done what he needed to do to assert himself as the team’s second true championship contender early on in the year.
As long as Mercedes continue to remain Formula 1’s top team and win constructor championships and one of their two drivers continue to win driver championships, preferably with both of their drivers in championship contention, they have no reason to consider moving on from the 29-year-old Finn.