Valtteri Bottas has explained why he did not initially let teammate Lewis Hamilton through during the Spanish Grand Prix, referencing his battle with Charles Leclerc.
With Hamilton opting for a two-stop strategy, he dropped back behind Valtteri Bottas into third on lap 43 in order to gain a tyre advantage over leader Max Verstappen.
Hamilton then set about chasing down both Bottas and Verstappen, with the Finn receiving a radio message from his race engineer letting him know that Hamilton was on a different strategy.
Although Hamilton had a significant tyre and pace advantage at this stage, Bottas did not simply let his teammate through, instead staying in front until the eventual winner made a pass into Turn 10.
Asked about the incident after the race, Bottas said that he did not want to ruin the team’s strategy, but had to prioritise his own race.
“Yeah, I got the message and obviously we were on different strategies at that point so unless something crazy would happen, I wasn’t really any more with him,” he said. “But the thing was, at that time, I was trying to get Charles off my pit window so I could stop again and try and be ahead of him, so I was really conscious that I didn’t want to lose too much time, and I was really focusing on my race so it was about balancing things.
“Of course, as a racing driver, you prioritise yourself, your race, because that’s what we do but also we work as a team, so you don’t want to ruin the win for the team if that is possible; if it is not possible for you. So I tried to do the best thing I could for us as a team and for myself. It’s always hard doing those kind of things and either know… ask the other driver if he predicts what’s going to happen and where to go but I think in the end it was kind of OK.”
Asked for his perspective, Hamilton added: “I think we’re the best teammates so honestly I didn’t know that he had a message so in my mind I was like ‘we’re racing’ and that’s totally fine for me, particularly early on in this part of the season so in my mind I was ‘so I’ve got to get close and hope for an overtake’ but then obviously when we went into turn ten, we were on massively different strategies so I was going to get him at some stage because I had much better tyres.
“And we were going into turn ten and I thought there was a gap there and I wasn’t quite sure and then there was a gap and Valtteri was completely fair, I wouldn’t lose too much time but this is how we win as a team. We sometimes have to, sometimes we’re in that position where you just… you’ve got to put the team first and getting a second and a third is good but getting a first is obviously max points and that’s key.”