Lewis Hamilton 'hated' beating Valtteri Bottas in Russia

Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton 'hated' beating Bottas in Russia

Team orders dominated the Sochi race a year ago.

Matthew Scott

Thursday 26 September 2019 18:15

Lewis Hamilton says he "hated" inheriting victory at the Russian Grand Prix last year and does not envisage a repeat in Sochi this weekend.

Bottas took pole position and led the race until Mercedes ordered him to let Hamilton through after the championship leader engaged in an on-track battle with title rival Sebastian Vettel.

A year on, Bottas is Hamilton's closest rival in the standings and the Briton is relieved that victory will only rely on him.

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"I want to do the job on my own," he said. "That's never what I've asked for and even looking back at last year, I hated that experience and wished that I wasn't in that position.

"I don't think I need help from anybody to do the job that I know I can do, except for obviously my team in terms of doing a better job altogether throughout the weekend.

"But currently I'm fighting Valtteri for the world championship, so I don't expect a second of him to move that around. I think if it was for the win at the last race it would be a lot different."

Team orders once again came to the fore in Singapore last weekend as Bottas was held back to prevent Hamilton losing out excessively after a strategy blunder from Mercedes.

"Firstly it was nothing to do with me. Neither me or Valtteri had any input into the strategy," Hamilton said.

"If you look at the scenario, the team ultimately had the wrong decision, we were going from second to seventh and looking at a seventh and a fourth, which is worse for the team, so the team took the decision to make that choice to have a fourth and fifth, which is better for points.

"I think Valtteri knows it was nothing of choice or anything to do with favouritism within the team because we've never had that."