At the 53rd of the 66 laps scheduled on the Barcelona track, Lewis Hamilton completed the overtaking on teammate Valtteri Bottas, not without some difficulty. The two were on different strategies and the Englishman risked losing precious time in his run-up to Max Verstappen, which materialized seven laps later. Bottas at the end of the race admitted to having received a clear team order from Mercedes, but also to have thought about his own race: “I got the message and obviously we were on different strategies at that point. But at that moment I was trying to get Leclerc away from my pit stop window so I could stop again and get back on track in front of him. Therefore I didn’t want to waste too much time and I tried to balance the two needs“.
The experienced Finnish driver reassured his intentions: “Clearly as a driver you try to prioritize your race, but we also work as a team and there is no intention of ruining a win for the team. So I just tried to do the best thing for us as a team and for myself“. Instead, he seemed less understanding Toto Wolff, head of the Mercedes team, who did not hide his disappointment at how Bottas handled the situation.
“I understand that we are talking about pilots, and I know what their instincts are“, The Austrian manager began, before launching the jab:”We would have liked something different, because Lewis was a completely different strategy. He would have reached Verstappen faster, but in the end we still achieved the result. I can understand that Valtteri had another difficult day and was bored. But if we had lost the race, I would have been much more critical of him. We can certainly learn something from this situation, both ways“.
Wolff then added: “We’ll talk about itbut it will be an amicable discussion“, Before giving an opinion on Bottas’ race:”He continues to score points, in qualifying there were three riders in three points, the first race he was on pole, so his speed is remarkable. But when things go wrong from the start, it’s easy to lose time from the leader and it’s basically a knockout, behind Charles he lost something like 20 seconds and at most he could make third.“.
–
