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Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas said he almost walked away from Formula 1 after two years racing alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.

The Finn was parachuted in to replace 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg for the 2017 season, with the former Williams driver taking over the second Mercedes seat.

Bottas explained that he had gone into those initial seasons with the mindset of challenging for the Drivers’ Championship, and claimed three wins en route to third place overall in 2017.

However, his 2018 season saw a downturn in form as he fell to fifth overall with no victories – the same year that Lewis Hamilton defeated Sebastian Vettel to claim title glory.

The difficulty of racing alongside Hamilton almost caused Bottas to walk away from the sport, with the Finn revealing he was in a dark place by the time his first two seasons alongside Hamilton had ended.

“At the end of 2018, I almost stopped, it was so close,” he told the Motor Sport Magazine podcast.

“Just because of the fact that I couldn’t understand and take the fact that I couldn’t beat Lewis in those two years.

“I put so much pressure on myself. Towards the end of ’18, especially when I started to have the support role in the team, I really couldn’t take it, I really struggled. It was not fun.

“The last four or five races of ’18 were more painful because you should enjoy F1 and it is pretty cool, but it wasn’t that at all. So I had a good break between the two seasons and really had to think things through.”

Faced with criticism in the media and with