Mercedes sharpens its F1 defensive
Ferrari’s newfound pace forces a turn to team orders for current champions
FORMULA One world champions Mercedes have indicated they may increasingly have to favour Lewis Hamilton over new team-mate Valtteri Bottas to counter the threat posed by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
The Italian team’s turn of pace has seen Sebastian win two out of three races so far this season, and with just one victory to his name in 2017, lewis now trails Vettel by seven points going into the Russain Grand Prix this weekend.
In practice, this will likely mean the reluctant imposition of more of the so-called ‘team orders’ used by Merc in Bahrain two weeks ago.
“We don’t like that, at all,” team boss Toto Wolff told reporters after Bottas twice obeyed radio instructions to let the faster Hamilton through to chase eventual winner Vettel at round three.
“It’s not what we have done in the last couple of years but the situation is different now so it needs a proper analysis of what it means and where we are.”
Mercedes have never had a designated number one driver, and Wolff said the desire was to give both equal opportunity at the start of the race.
The team won all but two races last season but are no longer dominant in a championship that has for the past three years been an internal battle.
The disparity between the current Mercedes pairing is more marked than before, with Bottas yet to win a race and Hamilton surpassed only by Michael Schumacher in the all-time lists with 54 victories.
Bahrain was Bottas’s first career pole position (breaking Hamilton’s run of six straight), whereas Hamilton has 63 and could sail past Schumacher’s record of 68 later in the year.
Bottas, who joined Mercedes in January as replacement for now-retired world champion Nico Rosberg, is 23 adrift of his team-mate in third. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who won the championship with Ferrari in 2007, has yet to stand on the podium this season and has not been on pole since 2008.
The Finn has slipped 34 points behind, with half as many as his German team-mate.
The 5.8km Sochi Autodrom has been in the Formula One calendar for the past three years, and Mercedes have won all three Grands Prix here - twice with Hamilton in 2014 and 2015, and once with Nico Rosberg last year.