Russell and Bottas: the ball of pretenses

Valtteri Bottas knows where he will drive next year. George Russell knows where he will drive next year. Lewis Hamilton knows where Valtteri Bottas and George Russell will drive next year. Toto wolff knows who will ride for him next year.

2022? @ GeorgeRussell63 knows where he'll be, but he's keeping it quiet for now…#DutchGP 🇳🇱 #F1 pic.twitter.com/bqaICoyBXR

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 2, 2021

Fichtre, everyone knows who will drive where next year. But no one wants to say it. So let's try to maintain the suspense! Quite a balancing act as the open secret has been out for a while.

And then flute! We'll tell you. Russell is preparing to join Mercedes from the 2022 season, Bottas will replace his compatriot Kimi Räikkönen at Alfa Romeo. So why continue to pretend? To do things properly, the German way, coordinate all the announcements and thus reveal the falling dominoes in their entirety.

True to his maverick nature, Kimi Räikkönen did not wait to start the celebrations announcing his retirement in a message posted on Instagram Wednesday evening. It took almost two hours for Alfa Romeo to make the news official via its official communication channels. Sign that the surprise was not feigned.

“I know where I will ride next year”, Russell declared this Thursday in Zandvoort (Netherlands), specifying that he had been informed of it shortly before the Belgian GP weekend.

Bottas was even more evasive, trying to make people believe that the matter had not been heard. “Things are moving in the right direction”, he simply blurted out in the middle of the dunes bordering the North Sea. “A multi-year contract would be nice,” he added. “I have never experienced this before in F1”. At 32, the nine-time Grand Prix winner still has many good seasons ahead of him.

According to our Daily Mail colleague Jonathan McEvoy, always well informed, Hamilton would have liked to keep the solid and faithful Bottas at his side. So as not to be too bothered internally as it could have been in the time of Nico Rosberg. With Russell, it will probably not be the same mayonnaise, even if the British hopeful has never had to deal with real big names...

The seven-time world champion apparently came close to winning his case this summer, but Wolff probably knows he has to prepare for the future and can't let Russell waste his talent in the soft underbelly off the grid for one more year.

What a weekend! It's no secret that we've had some tough times in recent years, but not one member of this team has ever stopped pushing. You all belong up on that podium, @WilliamsRacing. It was a privilege to represent you up there today. 💙 pic.twitter.com/9hLpCUaanF

- George Russell (@ GeorgeRussell63) August 29

If he is annoyed at the idea of ​​having his young and ambitious compatriot in his way, Hamilton showed none of it this Thursday. He even greeted “this incredible talent”, who has just celebrated his first podium at Spa in the grotesque circumstances that we know.

The seven-time world champion nevertheless clarified that he had not " nothing to prove " and recalled that he had already taken on some great clients as a teammate during his illustrious career, starting with Fernando Alonso during his F1 debut at McLaren in 2007.

While waiting for the official announcements, which will probably come next week before the Monza meeting, everyone is acting as if nothing had happened. But no one is fooled!