Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas has briefly discussed the comradery that exists between the drivers, confirming that they all share a WhatsApp Group Chat.
The drivers have had a fair bit to talk about amongst each other over recent years, one of which was how to tackle the racism epidemic that has been so prominent since the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
They all convened at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix earlier this year to plan out their next steps while threats of missile attacks loomed over the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
Almost certainly, there will also have been chats about the COVID-19 pandemic which affected the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and at various stages, rendered six drivers unable to race.
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With the involvement in social media becoming ever more focal in Formula 1, it can be left to the imagination as to the sorts of things the drivers might say if they were in a group chat.
That is very much still up in the air, but Bottas recently confirmed that they are all in one, and they use it to talk about safety during events, but also slightly more jovial topics.
“We’ve got a group chat which is actually an official thing for safety things and stuff like that,” the Finn told NOS.
“Sometimes there are some jokers, that’s part of it, but I think every driver is on very good terms and we have good respect.”
Bottas has scored points seven times this season, but all of them arrived in the opening nine rounds of the season.
Alfa Romeo have been out-developed by other midfield teams since Canada, and points have been hard to come by in the last six rounds.
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Bottas qualified 16th at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, and had climbed up to 13th before he suffered a mechanical failure.
It was his fifth non-finish of the season, and his third in a row after another failure had put him out of the Hungarian Grand Prix before the summer break.
The 32-year-old was then wiped out early on in Belgium by the Williams of Nicholas Latifi.