Valtteri Bottas has laughed off suggestions that he has already signed some sort of pre-contract with Ferrari.
Asked about the rumours in Barcelona today the Finn was adamant that no deal has been done with the Italian team.
“I heard plenty of stories,” he said. “And sometimes it’s quite funny to hear those, because in the end you know what’s the case and what’s not. There’s a lot of people making up stuff. The fact is at the moment I’m just focussing on this season and getting the maximum for us as a team. The rest, I don’t know yet.
“There’s been always many kind of rumours, so I’m not really thinking about those. That’s for my management to think [about]. Like I said before I’m only personally focussing on this moment and this season, because I think that’s the best thing for me to do for the future as well.”
He confirmed that he will be a free agent at the end of 2015: “I don’t have anything for next year.”
However he wouldn’t comment on whether discussions on an Williams contract extension are ongoing.
“My management is doing all that, and maybe there can be some things they don’t tell me, so you should ask them!
“If they have something solid for sure there will speak with me, but at the moment we haven’t spoken about the future. We’re not at that point.
“Of course we want to win here at Williams, we have big plans for the future, and the team has invested a lot. It has great people and made a massive jump from ’13 to ’14. It’s been a bit of a difficult start, but if we can keep the development going we can be again strong at the end of the season.”
Bottas is unlucky, like Nico Hulk. Opportunity was a fleeting moment that passed for both. I would bet a sizeable amount that Valteri will not be invited to Maranello, no matter how many promo tales Hakkinen cooks up!
When the time comes I think it will be young Max from STR or possibly Nasr at Sauber, esp if both continue the same level of performance next year.