LEWIS: THIS WILL BE MY TOUGHEST SEASON YET
Portuguese Grand Prix winner knows he will be in a fight to retain World title
Lewis Hamilton has predicted that the battle for this year’s Formula 1 World championship will go down to the wire after snatching his second victory of the season on Sunday.
The Mercedes man was forced to fight through the order to win the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao and overtook team-mate Valtteri Bottas and Red BullHonda star Max Verstappen along the way.
The victory means the reigning title holder is eight points clear of Verstappen in the standings, but Hamilton thinks that the dogfight between the top drivers will last until the end of the season in
Abu Dhabi in December.
Hamilton said he was delighted with his 97th career win.
“It’s a much different feeling of course when you are battling so closely with two great drivers. So yeah, it feels fantastic,” said the 36-year-old. “As you can see I think it is a great fight between Mercedes and Red Bull and I’m sure also down the field and we will be pushing each other right to the last race.”
Lewis Hamilton says he was “on the limit” to battle his way back into the lead of the Portuguese Grand Prix in Sunday after slipping to third place early on.
The Briton’s 97th career Formula 1 win was made more difficult when he was jumped at an early restart by Max
Verstappen’s Red Bull-Honda, which pushed the World champion down to third spot. He responded by repassing the Dutchman when the Red Bull man made a tiny mistake.
Hamilton then tracked down race leader and team-mate Valtteri Bottas pulled a move at Turn 1 to secure prime slot. Hamilton was further helped when the pitstops played out as Bottas slithered wide and allowed Verstappen back up to second spot. That secured the order for the rostrum.
Hamilton said: “That was such a tough race, physically and mentally, keeping everything together.
“I didn’t quite get as good a start as Valtteri and then lost out at the restart which was not good. I think Max made a mistake at some point and that was perfect. With
Valtteri I had to make the move early on before the tyres were destroyed and I just managed to get him at Turn 1. [It was] right on my limit. [A] great race.”
The victory means that Hamilton has an eight-point gap at the head of the championship table.
Verstappen, who stopped for fresh tyres, had set a fastest lap late on in the race to try and earn an extra point, but it was later stripped as he had strayed over track limits to record the benchmark time. Bottas, who had also stopped to bolt on new Pirellis, eventually claimed the extra mark. Behind the top three, Sergio Perez put in a mammoth opening stint but fell away at the end to claim fourth ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Results
1 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) 1h34m31.421s; 2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull-Honda) +29.148s; 3 Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes); 4 Sergio Perez (Red Bull-Honda); 5 Lando Norris (McLarenMercedes); 6 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari); 7 Esteban Ocon (Alpine); 8 Fernando
Alonso (Alpine); 9 Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren-Mercedes); 10 Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri-Honda). Championship:
1 Hamilton 69; 2 Verstappen 61; 3 Norris 37; 4 Bottas 32; 5 Leclerc 28; 6 Perez 22.
Next race: Spanish Grand Prix, May 9.