Valtteri Bottas became "bitter" over his five-year failure to challenge Lewis Hamilton for Formula 1 glory, in the view of Karun Chandhok.
The Finn made the move to Mercedes in 2017 having impressed while driving for Williams. He joined a couple of months after Hamilton had been beaten to the drivers' title glory by Nico Rosberg, who then announced his immediate retirement from F1.
Bottas spent the next five seasons in the quickest car on the grid, giving him plenty of chances to rack up race wins and compete for titles. But he was constantly outshone by Hamilton during that spell and, eventually, he left for a fresh start while the team brought in George Russell.
The man from southern Finland has spoken many times about how he was affected by his Mercedes struggles. And Chandhok has a lot of sympathy for him and understands how difficult it must have been to be constantly compared to one of the best racers the sport has ever seen.
"He just got more and more angry and frustrated and bitter about it," he told the Sky Sports F1 podcast. "I think of someone like Eddie Irvine, or someone like David Coulthard when he was up against Mika [Hakkinen] and there was a period where he was getting angrier and angrier, but then at some point, you just go, 'There'll be a year where the car suits me a bit better, and I'll have a chance'.
“But actually, guess what? You can have nine years at McLaren or whatever, make a lot of money, win some great races and build a great career. And this is it – I think it's a poisoned chalice if you're team-mate to Max [Verstappen], Lewis, [Michael] Schumacher, etc.
"It is quite good, because it means you're inevitably in one of the best cars on the grid, or one of the top three, but the downside is you're always compared to the genius in the other car."
Russell has so far stood up to the test well, but neither he nor Hamilton have been in the title conversation with Mercedes struggling. Red Bull are the ones dominating the grid, with Sergio Perez doing his best to give Max Verstappen some work to do in his title defence.
"There's no shame in being beaten by Max Verstappen I think," said Chandhok of the Mexican's fight. "If you look at the history of the sport, every five, six, seven years, a genius comes along.
"Before Max was Lewis, before Lewis was Fernando [Alonso] and Kimi [Raikkonen] sort of came together, you had Michael [Schumacher], [Ayrton] Senna, [Alain] Prost. And if you can take the odd win off one of these geniuses and finish behind them and rack up a whole bunch of wins, he would have had a very good Formula 1 career, frankly."
