Valtteri Bottas is certain that Mercedes would have taken the team orders call if he was in the lead from Lewis Hamilton.
Once the team secured a 1-2 in the 2018 Formula 1 German Grand Prix, upon safety car re-start, Bottas went for the race lead against Hamilton for the briefest of moment before Mercedes’ James Vowles asked him to hold station.
The Finn duly obliged, but the perception was made that he settled for the ‘Number 2’ driver position. Mercedes did clarify after the race that they would have done the same if Bottas was in the lead, something which the Finn also agrees to.
“I do believe we are still allowed to race freely,” he said ahead of Hungarian GP. “Obviously, it always goes case by case but there’s no plan in place at the moment for me being at all in a support role. We are still on equal terms. That’s the plan for now.
“Obviously hopefully it will continue until the end of the year. Back to what happened, I think with all the difficult races we had on the triple header, we lost so many points with different causes, and I kind of get the team’s decision after lap one.
“We were side by side a couple of times and they wanted to get those points. I am very confident they would have done the same if I was in the lead at that point. Yeah, that’s how it is,” he explained.
From Mercedes point of view, the German manufacturer only wanted to secure a 1-2 finish after they had their biggest rival Sebastian Vettel out of the way. With Hamilton in the lead, it was a bonus for them, which helped him to take a 17 points lead over Vettel.
Two-time champion Mika Hakkinen said he wouldn’t have done what Bottas did, but lauded his professionalism in the whole situation. Meanwhile, the surprise bit of news Bottas shared while talking to the media was about Hamilton’s pit stop.
The Finn said he wasn’t aware of a penalty scare to Hamilton and wasn’t told about it, for him to push on, in those laps to at least stay inside five seconds if there was a penalty. “I wasn’t aware of his pit stop situation, that he had to go over the line.
“So, I wasn’t aware of that, so that’s why I wasn’t really trying to be within one second because everything was pretty much set for us then. I wasn’t aware,” he said. Bottas eventually finished about 4.5s – which was enough to give him the win if Hamilton was handed a five-second time penalty, instead he was only given a reprimand.
