Lewis Hamilton admits strong early results meant he was a little rattled by ‘Bottas 2.0’ in 2019.
Having failed to win a race the previous year, Valtteri Bottas began last season with strong victories in Australia and Baku and held the championship lead until the Spanish Grand Prix.
Hamilton himself had been fortunate to capitalise on Charles Leclerc’s engine issues to win in Bahrain after dominating the previous weekend in China.
And with Bottas showing good pace in qualifying and the race, Lewis did find himself having to regroup.
“The first couple of races are usually not perfect for me,” he said. “They’re still not bad, still better than average, but then there’s all the outside pressures of ‘Bottas 2.0’ and I’m thinking, ‘We’re 2-2 at one stage, two wins apiece’.
“I’ve got to stay solid in my mind, I can’t allow the outside [to affect me]… but being human it’s very hard not to notice those things.”
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Ultimately, Hamilton had little to fear as six wins in eight races between Spain and Hungary saw him build an unassailable lead, eventually claiming his sixth F1 title in Austin.
And that charge during the European season even caught the Briton by surprise.
“It’s crazy because we got to August and I’m thinking, ‘Jeez, I’ve had eight wins’, you kind of forget those things because you’re just always looking forwards and time is always ticking,” he said.
Only two of those wins came from pole, however, and Hamilton played down his worst year of qualifying since 2013 with only five poles in total.
“It was not intentional not to wow,” he admitted. “I’ve been searching for that wow lap this year and honestly, I’ve had good laps but they’ve not shown in the order, necessarily.
“I think some of my second places that split up the Ferraris, for me felt like relatively quite wow laps but because I wasn’t on pole by half a second it doesn’t appear that way for you, but for me internally it did.”
