Valtteri Bottas may have to resort to Nico Rosberg-style mind games if he wants any chance of beating Lewis Hamilton, Damon Hill says.
The Finn has been trying to take on his Mercedes teammate by a process of consistent evolvement, targeting those areas where he loses out most to the six-time world champion.
But while Bottas 3.0 may have won the first race in Austria, two easy wins for Hamilton in Styria and Budapest are already raising fears the Briton will stroll to a seventh Formula 1 crown with no-one else able to challenge the dominance of the German manufacturer.
“He just needs to find out how to pile pressure on Lewis,” Hill, the 1996 world champion, told the F1 Nation podcast on what Bottas can do to beat Lewis.
“If that means, I don’t know, doing psychological stuff that Nico alluded to, to make Lewis lose his equilibrium, maybe he has to do that.
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“It’s finding a way to unlock that next level. I don’t know if you can psychologically unlock the next level – I think every driver’s got it but it’s accessing it,” the current Sky Sports pundit added.
“People like Lewis can get there. They might even have another level that they haven’t even been to themselves yet, that’s the worrying thing.
“I don’t know whether Lewis has actually been pushed that hard sometimes. I don’t know about Valtteri, but he’s got to find something, [some] inspiration from somewhere.
“Frankly, I don’t know what you do to upset Lewis. He seems pretty impregnable.”
Hamilton currently sits five points ahead of Bottas after the first three races, and now heads to Silverstone for back-to-back rounds at a circuit he has only lost once at since 2014.
