Valtteri Bottas refuses to answer Lewis Hamilton question and lands dig at F1 team | F1 | Sport

Valtteri Bottas kept it cool, calm and collected during a recent appearance on Hot Ones – a YouTube series where contestants are asked brutally honest questions. The racecar driver is gearing up for a return to the sport as one of the drivers for the new team on the grid, Cadillac.

He was joined by Cadillac team-mate, Sergio Perez, for the shoot, with the pair of them testing their loyalties by answering some potentially sketchy questions. However, Bottas refused to be drawn into a debate surrounding Lewis Hamilton, as well as some of his other former and future team-mates.

The Finnish star was asked to rank the driving ability of Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Zhou Guanyu and new team-mate, Sergio Perez. After initially laughing the question off, Bottas eventually replied: “All of them are my team-mates, so it’s very personal who I’m going to put last… I would put you [Perez] first obviously [laughs], but I’m going to try a hot wing [the punishment for not fully answering].”

Bottas looked a little more flustered than he usually does while behind the wheel, but he did manage to power through it. The 36-year-old avoided a similar punishment on a different question when he was asked about the team he was most excited to leave.

He replied: “I’m an honest man and obviously there are different circumstances to how you leave and why. Stake F1 Team, I was quite happy to leave at the end, because of the circumstances, but we had some good memories too.”

Bottas was replaced by Stake for the 2025 season, after the team opted for a new driver line-up going forward. He even went as far as saying he felt anonymous in the sport because of the team’s poor performances.

Speaking at the time, he said: “Fighting very much towards the back end of the grid, race to race, it is almost like I disappeared to some people. It was hard for me to prove what I can do. You know the name of the game, even though I don’t feel any degradation of my abilities and how I feel in the car. Nothing has changed there.”

Bottas will be hoping to establish himself in the F1 conversation once again when he makes a long-awaited return to the grid for the 2026 season.