Hamilton did not get past Bottas easily: 'In my mind we were racing'

When Lewis Hamilton made his second pit stop in the Spanish GP and then opened the chase for Max Verstappen, he had to get past his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas. Briefly, it looked like the Finn was holding Hamilton back for a moment, but according to the reigning world champion, everything went fairly.

Message came unexpectedly

Bottas soon got a message over the on-board radio that his faster teammate was coming up right behind him. Yet Bottas seemed to hold Hamilton up for half a lap. Hamilton saw no problem with it: "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’," he said at the FIA press conference.

"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," Hamilton explained. When the Brit saw the gap, he immediately went for it and overtook his teammate.

Team comes first

"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," concludes Hamilton.