Valtteri Bottas reveals how he ‘starved himself’ at start of F1 career in vulnerable letter

“It started with a simple diet. After my rookie season, we went on winter break, and the Williams team was predicting an overweight car for 2014. This was back when there was no seat-plus-driver weight minimum, so the team suggested that I lose five kilos. If you put a clear goal like that in front of me, I am going to obsess over it.

“When you tell me five kilos in two months, my brain thinks, ‘Five? Why not 10? We can make the car even quicker.’ So I started eating steamed broccoli and a bit of steamed cauliflower for almost every meal. I can still smell the broccoli. Wet. Green. Plain. My god.

“It was like a game to me. I would wake up and weigh myself every morning, and when I’d see the number go down, I’d feel a deep satisfaction. I would come back from a 90-minute run and eat my little bowl of steamed broccoli, just to have enough energy so I could go for another 90-minute run.

“I had this GPS watch, and my coach could track my training, my heart rate, everything. I knew he would think I was burning myself out, so I started taking the watch off and leaving it at home before my second session. The game became completely consuming.”

Bottas acknowledged that he felt like a “drug addict” at the time but now, in hindsight, says that mentality was “completely delusional.”

Bottas celebrates a podium finish in Austria in 2014 (Getty Images)

He adds: “After two months of spiralling, my nerves were shot. I would wake up at 4am on my own, no alarm. My heart would be beating out of my chest. I’d have all this energy, and I’d think, ‘This is so great. I have so much extra time in the day to do all my training.’

“I was like a drug addict. ‘I’ve never felt better!’ Ha. Completely delusional. The actual reason I was waking up so early was that my body was in starvation mode. The worst part about it was that I would look in the mirror in the morning and I would see my silhouette, and I was so satisfied that my reflection was getting slimmer. It was not about racing anymore.

“I don’t even know how much weight I lost in those two months. I looked sick. And of course, after everything I put myself through, we came back from the break and started testing the car, what do you think happened? The damn thing was actually underweight. Welcome to F1.

“I started having these intense foggy spells. Not full-blown panic attacks exactly, but whenever I was in a crowd, I would start to feel dizzy and just …. weird, like I had to get out of there. I wanted to be alone, or in the car.

“The strangest thing is that when I was on the grid, everything felt fine.”

Bottas is back on the F1 grid this season with Cadillac (PA)

Bottas says the turning point arrived after Jules Bianchi’s ultimately fatal crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix – and he decided to see a psychologist.

“My psychologist actually made an interesting observation about me,” Bottas penned. “He said, ‘You know Valtteri, you don’t seem to have any interests outside of racing. Nothing else that brings you joy. You’re almost like a machine.’

“He was right. My whole identity was the car.”

Bottas, who has 10 grand prix wins and 67 podiums to his name, will race this weekend at the Miami Grand Prix as F1 returns following the enforced five-week spring break.