BOTTAS VS RUSSELL: ON A WING(MAN) AND A PRAYER

Lewis Hamilton’s role is just one plate Toto Wolff must spin as 2021 unfolds, because the identity of the team’s second driver – Hamilton’s ‘wingman’ – is open to question from 2022 onwards. George Russell’s assured stint as Hamilton’s stand-in at last season’s Sakhir GP has had a complicating effect, strengthening Wolff’s hand in negotiations with Lewis. Russell could replace Valtteri Bottas or even Hamilton should the need arise, for while George might lack Lewis’s box-office value he is eminently capable of delivering on track.

“With Valtteri, we know exactly what we have,” is Wolff’s telling summation of where the Finn stands. He won’t say Bottas doesn’t have what it takes to challenge for the title, and speaks warmly of “fantastic performances”, and yet his pronouncements are shrouded in equivocation.

Despite several ‘reboots’ since his arrival at Mercedes in 2017, Bottas has been both frustrating and frustrated. Capable of beating Hamilton over a single lap, given the right circuit and conditions, too often he has had off-weekends or allowed small problems to send him backwards in races. Tyre management has occasionally been an issue or, as at Imola last year when a chunk of bodywork lodged in an aerodynamically critical area of his car, you could say that if he didn’t have bad luck he’d have no luck at all.

“I don’t want to leave any ‘what ifs’ after this year,” says Bottas, which is a tacit admission that this season is a critical one. He acknowledges he could have done “a better job” in several races in 2020, and that he either put too much pressure on himself or not enough.

“A lot of work and focus for me this season is the mental side of things, and trying to find the right way of approaching every single race weekend.”

He’ll need to find that quickly if negotiations open sooner rather than later – because as Wolff says, ominously, “We also know what we have in George – and the future is bright for George in any case.”