Bottas' new best friend

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Valtteri Bottas has been showing off his new best friend on social media this week, with this delightful picture of him bonding with Fanni.

His Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton is well known for his love of canine company. The Briton regularly brings his bulldogs Roscoe and Coco to Grand Prix events around the world.

Hamilton's dogs even have their own Instagram account, and the driver revealed recently that Roscoe is a highly paid model in Los Angeles able to command fees of £530 per day!

But just as Bottas prefers a much simpler non-celebrity lifestyle with his wife Emilia away from the race track, so we can expect Fanni to be rather more stay-at-home than the Hamilton pack.

"All the usual things," Bottas told The Sun last month when asked what he got up to during the week when not racing. "I do my laundry and now we have a dog as well, called Fanni, so that will take up some time, plus we go out to restaurants."

Although it's the summer shutdown, Bottas is staying race fit by indulging in his love for running and cycling.

"I don't spend much time inside," he admitted. "I always have to go somewhere, so I'll go on a ride on my motorbike or a ride in the car.

"If I've got friends round or I'm in Finland spending time with them, then we'll do some water sports in the summer and then have beers and chill in the sauna.

"If I'm with my wife, then just the usual stuff people do." However, these days the 'usual stuff' doesn't include going to the cinema.

"In Finland, I don't go anymore because I really don't like the attention now people recognise me more," he admitted. "They are watching me more than the film."

Bottas added that he'd just bought a new car - a blue Mercedes GTS, keeping him firmly on-brand! - and revealed his favourite music of the moment.

"The Offspring and their album 'Americana'. I have never seen them live," he said. "They played in Finland the other week when I was racing, so I missed them."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.