Lewis Hamilton “wished” he wasn’t in position to take win from Bottas last year

Lewis Hamilton has said that he “wished that I wasn’t in that position” in the Russian Grand Prix last year which saw Mercedes team orders come into play to hand the Brit victory over the Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas had claimed pole at Sochi in 2018 and led the whole race, nearing his first victory of the year before being on the receiving end of team orders.
 
He was ordered to let Hamilton pass him due to being under threat from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, his main title rival at the time, handing the points and race win over to the Brit.
 
But the34-year old doesn’t want a repeat of the same event with the increased pressure coming from Ferrari during the second half of 2019, regretting what had happened the year before.

“It’s just never been my philosophy. I want to do the job on my own,” said Hamilton (quoted by Crash.net).

“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."

However, team orders were once again a feature in the Silver Arrows garage as Bottas was told to lap a lot slower than he had been to prevent him from overtaking his teammate, something Hamilton said neither had any input for.

“Firstly it was nothing to do with me. Neither me or Valtteri had any input into the strategy,” he added.

“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 don’t know if I got to see Valtteri after the race, so I’ve not personally had time to talk to him.”