Hamilton claims Bottas is in contention for 2017 title
- Published on 10 Jul 2017 13:19
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- By: Fergal Walsh
Lewis Hamilton believes that teammate Valtteri Bottas has a chance of winning the 2017 title. So far this season, it has been widely considered that the title fight would go down to the wire between Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, but Hamilton has stated that it is a three-way fight.
"Of course he is," Hamilton told the Finnish broadcaster C More. "He is 15 points behind me, which is closer than I am to the (championship) lead. Valtteri is doing a fantastic job and it definitely will be a fight to the end," he added.
Bottas secured his second pole position and win in Austria last weekend, closing the gap to teammate Hamilton in the standings, who only finished fourth around the Red Bull Ring. Bottas' victory didn't come without controversy however, as it was suggested that he jumped the start.
F1 steward Mika Salo told Ilta Sanomat newspaper: "From the camera, it looked like a false start. But the limits for a false start were not exceeded. You look at the data and, according to the data, there was no jump start."
Fergal Walsh
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Replies (5)
Login to replyf1fan0101
Posts: 1,804
I hope he is, great underdog
Rindtchamp
Posts: 304
Utter hogwash and Lewis knows it, Bottas is nothing more than his #2 driver to back him up.
Mark my words, any time when Lewis is behind him, Bottas will wave him past.
Kurosawa
Posts: 112
I believe so too, I think they will push Bottas more and more in a second driver role as the title battle with Vettel heats up
The only chance of Bottas becoming a title contender is when Lewis starts to have broken engines or reliability issues the next couple of races
Valtteri had the bad luck that he already had a DNF this year, because of this he is behind in the championship and that will be used against him
yellowfly81
Posts: 79
The more the merrier - I want as open a title battle as possible!
Wolfgang
Posts: 313
this is in my point of view nothing else than saying publicly to mercedes please sign him for the next years because he gets along with him (until now.. We remember his good relationship with Nico in the early days in 2013 and know now what happened)