Five months of speculation, since a decision was taken to sign Nico Hulkenberg for 2025 and beyond, will finally come to an end next week.
Valtteri Bottas is expected to be confirmed as a Stake F1 driver for next season, RacingNews365 understands.
Five months of speculation, since a decision was taken to sign Nico Hulkenberg for 2025 and beyond, will finally come to an end next week.
Valtteri Bottas is expected to be confirmed as a Stake F1 driver for next season, RacingNews365 understands.
They must not value any available rookie highly enough. I assume they value safe hands more, and will go for another established driver even for 2026. Not saying it’s the best approach but I can see the reasoning.
Got to say I don’t see their logic. They got to build a successful team in the long term and changing drivers repeatedly does not aid that. All the youngsters who were successful in their first F2 season are good/great in F1 as well(Russell, leclerc, piastri, Norris, tsunoda) so neither pourchaire nor bortoleto are poor choices and I would argue are a better choice than bottas in the long term.
It all depends on how competitive they think they’ll be right off the bat. If they think they’ll be a contender right in 26 I’d agree with you, but the longer the timeframe the more sense “safe pair of hands” would make, to me at least.