Valtteri Bottas was sending “best wishes” to his doubters after repeating his “To whom it may concern” line after the Russian Grand Prix.
The Finn claimed his first win since the opening race in Austria at the Sochi Autodrom to perhaps breathe a little life into his Formula 1 title bid against Lewis Hamilton.
This followed a run of races where Bottas had struggled to match his teammate and even some assertions that he was not able to challenge the six-time world champion.
“Honestly, I just don’t get the people who have the need to criticise people,” he said via Crash.net.
“There’s been people telling me that I should ‘not bother’, I should ‘give up’, but how I am, I will never do that. So I just wanted to again send my best wishes to them. It just came out.
“But the main thing is I’m confident when I come to every race weekend and I believe I can do it and that’s how I’m always going to be. You have to have that mindset,” Bottas added.
“And I’m glad even [though] yesterday was tough, I didn’t give up, I looked at the positives and I knew there would be opportunities and things came to me today.
“So yeah, I hope I can encourage people not to give up because that’s the biggest mistake you can do in your life.”
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And while the Mercedes driver acknowledged his win was quite “lucky”, following the penalties for Hamilton, he feels the change in luck was due.
“It’s been a while, but it’s been so close many times,” he said. “I feel my race pace especially this season has been quite a bit better than any season before. So I can’t say it’s been frustrating but it’s been a bit annoying that it’s been close, but nearly there.
“Things definitely did go my way today. I’ve been saying that things can go against you forever. So it’s definitely really satisfying today to get the win. It felt like it was well-earned.
“Obviously I consider myself lucky as well with Lewis’s penalty. But otherwise, it was a strong race and I really feel that it can give me a good confidence boost and good momentum for the next races.”
