"James, It's Valtteri": Valtteri Bottas welcomes former Mercedes stablemate to Instagram

James Vowles was hilariously welcomed to Instagram by none other than his former team's driver, Valtteri Bottas. The two worked together at Mercedes a few years ago. While Vowles moved away from the team to become team principal at Williams, Bottas left Mercedes to join Alfa Romeo. However, they still share a good relationship with one another.

Several F1 personalities are still joining the popular social media platform, Instagram, for the very first time. Recently, Vowles became one of them as he created his Instagram account and posted several pictures of him with his family and team.

"Instagram, it's James...Team Principal, father and a racer at heart." he wrote.

Several famous F1-related Instagram accounts welcomed Williams' team boss, including his former teammate Valtteri Bottas. The Finnish driver humorously commented:

"James, it's Valtteri. Welcome to instagram"

Since both have worked together in Mercedes, on several occasions, Vowles has come on the radio to talk to Bottas during a race session. So, the sentence 'Valtteri, it's James' has become extremely popular in the F1 community.

The Alfa Romeo driver thus commented on Vowles' first post on Instagram in a similar fashion.

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Lewis Hamilton preferred Valtteri Bottas over George Russell as his teammate, feels F1 pundit

A few months ago, F1 pundit Peter Windsor claimed that the tension between George Russell and Lewis Hamilton will only grow, particularly if Mercedes develops a car worthy of winning races and championships.

“You could tell that there is definitely acrimony between the two now – and that’s not a good thing. Imagine if Mercedes had a Championship-winning car and this was the World Championship and grand prix wins they were racing for; imagine what it would be like between Lewis and George,” he stated on his YouTube channel.

Furthermore, Windsor felt that Hamilton always wanted to keep Valtteri Bottas in Mercedes, mainly because both created the right balance in the team. The F1 pundit also drew parallels to how Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez are working at Red Bull.

“Lewis always wanted to keep Valtteri, not necessarily because he loved Valtteri but because it was the right balance of the team. He could feel that. That was the same as Max Verstappen [and] Sergio Perez. It came to the surface more than ever before, I think, in the Japanese Grand Prix,” Windsor stated.

Hamilton himself has claimed that Bottas was his favorite teammate, simply because there were no mental games or complications with him.