Lewis Hamilton Now Wary of Teammate Valtteri Bottas

In motor racing one of the biggest unspoken rules, is that your biggest rival is your teammate. For Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, this is all the more true, especially since Mercedes have established a 96-point lead. With five 1-2 finishes, Valtteri Bottas is the closest rival and most realistic threat for the 2019 Formula 1 world championship.

Mercedes began the 2019 season on the back foot, since Ferrari was dominating in testing. However, come Australia, the tables turned and remained rooted there, as they were unable to translate that early pace.

So, with Scuderia Ferrari out of the picture, this battle is solely between Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Ahead of Monaco next weekend, Bottas trails Lewis Hamilton by seven points in the championship. In terms of victories, the five-time world champion has won three of the 5 victories, with Bottas winning the other two.

“The biggest threat is always the person closest to you,” Hamilton said.

“We have a buffer to the other guys and even though the Red Bulls have picked up on their engines this year, they have not built a car as good as in previous years and Ferrari too have good power but are lacking areas.

“So the closest to you is always the biggest threat especially as Valtteri is pulling out some great laps. It is good for the team and he fully deserves his position in the team and it is great to see him step up to another level.”

Lewis Hamilton confessed that neither he nor the team expected to win the first five races. Especially with such a poor run in testing, which actually warranted a B-spec car. Naturally, the sheer pace has been highly encouraging for everyone.

“Everyone is still pushing incredibly hard, which is still so great to see. It really is a phenomenal group of people. In the engineers’ room, nobody is over-confident”, Lewis Hamilton continued.

“We were just discussing improvements we could make and talking about how we could improve the car. They don’t mind constructive criticism. They don’t take it personally.

“I think this is the strongest team there is and has ever been and it would be hard to break that.”