Lewis Hamilton: “With Engineer Swap, Valtteri Bottas Knew All My Tricks”

Ahead of the 2019 Formula One season, Mercedes swapped around the race engineers of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Ultimately, this helped the Finn massively, as he was able to make Hamilton sweat in the first half of the season. However, the British driver was of the opinion that his teammate could access many of his racing secrets in 2019 because of the swap.

The engineer leaving the Hamilton camp was performance engineer Riccardo Musconi, who became Bottas’ race engineer. As a result, Valtteri Bottas seized victory in two of the opening four races to cement his position as a serious title threat to his team-mate.

Unfortunately, Bottas could not keep up with Hamilton for long and the latter cruised to his sixth world title. Contrary to theoretical belief the switch did not result in resentment between either party, as was the case between Lewis Hamilton and former teammate Nico Rosberg.

In truth, Hamilton admitted that he knew of the engineering musical chairs and he assured that the news only gave him an impetus to up his game.

“He is a very talented engineer and naturally he wants to progress,” Hamilton said. “No-one wants to stay in the same position and being lead engineer has got to be a great goal for an engineer.

“But we had learned so much and working together I had pulled things out of him that perhaps he didn’t realise he would have, or maybe it would’ve taken longer to have done, and vice-versa.

“So then when he goes over to the other side, without doubt he’d have been saying, ‘Valtteri, why weren’t you doing these things, Lewis does this, why are you not doing that?’

In light of this, Lewis Hamilton was aware that he needed to raise his game, as Bottas would be an even bigger threat with Musconi by his side. However the 6-time world champions confessed that he relished the challenge