Valtteri Bottas claims the chains will be off and he will go all out to achieve the best he can as he looks to save his Mercedes seat in 2019.
This past season couldn't have gone much worse for the Finn as bad luck and playing a support role to Lewis Hamilton meant he became the first driver since 2012 to go a whole year without a win while driving for the German manufacturer.
Now, Bottas faces a new threat to his career with Esteban Ocon off the Formula 1 grid next year, after been dropping by Force India, and sitting as reserve driver at Mercedes for the next 12 months, ahead of what many think will be a move into the 29-year-old's car for 2020.
“This sport is funny, you never know what happens in the future but I think the right mentality for me to approach next year is like I have nothing to lose," he told Autosport this week.
“I just want to go for it and drive like I stole it, like it’s my last race, last day ever. That’s a good plan.”
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Many accept that for Bottas 2018 was more about luck than his own lack of pace, certainly in the early races where he could have won in Bahrain, China and particularly Baku.
And the man himself thinks Mercedes has seen the disconnect between the headline-grabbing stat of a winless season and how he has actually performed.
“What we’ve analysed as a team and what we spoke about with the guys, is qualifying pace and race pace, compared to my teammate, has been better this year on average, which is positive, but the results haven’t," Valtteri claimed.
“We need to analyse why the results weren’t there. Obviously, sometimes it was unlucky, sometimes were different reasons.
“But I think performance-wise this year was better and results-wise last year was better.”
