Bottas: “Every opportunity key to beating Hamilton in 2019”

Valtteri Bottas pointed out both the plusses and minuses of being Lewis Hamilton’s teammate at the Spanish Grand Prix, winning praises for his outstanding pole lap that saw him overcome Hamilton by a full 0.634s on Saturday, before being forced to play second best to a remarkable race drive from Hamilton on Sunday. And after the race, the Finnish driver blamed his lacklustre getaway on a never-before-seen clutch issue. The chance of the 2019 drivers’ title being fought out exclusively between Bottas and Hamilton looking increasingly likely, as Hamilton led Bottas to the fifth consecutive Mercedes one-two at the start of this season. “For now, [the title battle is] between me and Lewis, but it's a massively long season,” said Bottas, when asked whether he expected an all-Mercedes scrap for the drivers’ championship in 2019. “There are many teams that, especially at some tracks, are very close and it's going to be a big development race between teams all through the season. But if it's going to be me and Lewis, every single opportunity is going to be key. That's why [the race in Spain] for me was annoying. I felt I worked hard for this weekend and for the qualifying… to be on pole, on this circuit where it means a lot and I lost it at the start. But that’s life and there's 16 opportunities to go. That's plenty. I look forward to it, Monaco next and we'll see.” The next race in the calendar is the Monaco Grand Prix on May 26 and Bottas is hopeful that the race will give him an immediate chance to hit back at Hamilton. “I feel I've never in my Formula 1 career I've never had a good car in Monaco,” said Bottas. “It's such a unique track, you need a very special car in terms of how it works mechanically in Monaco, with all the warps and bumps, so it's a question mark how we're going to perform there. But obviously from Barcelona here, Sector 3 with slow corners, it's promising… I would just hope that we have a good car there because it would be such a unique race to be fighting for the win, or win it. I've actually never been on the podium there so it's something I really look forward to. I'll definitely focus 100% of the weekend for the qualifying performance and being absolutely on it in Qualifying 3, like here. I live just next to the start-finish line,” he added, “so it would be nice to have a good car there…”

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