Lewis Hamilton: Valtteri Bottas highlights main strength he has over team-mate

Valtteri Bottas

Bottas highlights main strength he has over Hamilton

It's not proving to be enough at the moment.

Martin Macdonald

Wednesday 24 July 2019 15:25

Valtteri Bottas believes he has one major strength over Lewis Hamilton when it comes to racing - he is much hungrier for victories than his Mercedes team-mate.

Hamilton is one of the most successful drivers in the history of Formula 1 and has five world championships to his name, while he is poised to claim a sixth in 2019 as he leads the rankings by 39 points ahead of his nearest rival, Bottas.

His latest achievement was becoming the outright most successful driver at the British Grand Prix, as he made it six wins in his career which put him adrift of Alain Prost and Jim Clark on five.

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Bottas, meanwhile, is yet to taste championship glory. However he reckons that Hamilton will never be able to match his desire to win.

"I think I'm hungrier for the wins. I think that's a big strength," Bottas told ESPN.

"I still haven't achieved anything compared to my personal goals in F1, so I am definitely working harder than ever before."

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In order to try and overcome Hamilton in the championship standings, Bottas has been carefully studying the technique, strategy, and driving style of his team-mate, to try and determine his strengths and weaknesses.

"His strengths in general have been in slow speed corners, normally under braking and the entry phase and he can sometimes drive a bit of a different setup for the car that is easier for the rear tyres," the Finn explained.

"Those are the main things but he is also super consistent.

"I think his level of concentration when it comes down to qualifying is on a very good level, so he rarely makes mistakes when he needs to perform and he delivers when he needs to.

"So, for me it's still about finding the consistency on that and be on top of my game every single time. And race pace -- his race pace and tyre management is good.

"If there are differences in the race pace it is normally because the tyre is overheating on my side."

Bottas does admit that simply knowing more about Hamilton will not allow him to win, however, and insists he must look at ironing out his own bad habits.

"You can definitely see [the differences in the data], but it is not always that simple to do it in the car," he added.

"Many things that you learn as a kid are welded into your driving style and sometimes changing those can be difficult, so it is always balancing out trying to use all the big amounts of data we get and drive with your own instinct."