Hamilton admits he considered giving Bottas the win!

Lewis Hamilton looks nailed on to win the F1 Drivers’ Championship after winning today’s Russian Grand Prix and extending his lead in the standings to a huge 50 points with just 5 races left to go this season.

However, this victory was not one of the sweetest of his F1 career, after Mercedes ordered his team mate Valtteri Bottas to move aside and allow the Brit through to take the win.

Bottas is without a win so far this season and drove fantastically all weekend to take a stunning pole position and lead the race.

When the call came, the Finn dutifully let Hamilton past for the win.

And now, Hamilton has said that he “was really thinking” about letting Bottas back past towards the end of the race to allow him to take what would have been a deserved victory at the Sochi Autodrom.

When asked if he had thought about letting his team mate take the victory, he said: “It crossed my mind and I was really thinking about it.

“In the last 12 laps I was thinking ‘this feels so weird being in the lead’ and it just didn’t feel great.”

Despite the feeling of guilt from Hamilton, he admits that he knows these points are valuable just in case of the worst case scenario striking the Silver Arrows.

“We need those 10 points, because if the car breaks down, or we lose two engines and we lose the championship by one or three points we would look back to this day and say we didn’t work as a team – which we are,” he explained.

“That was their reasoning, as hard as it is to swallow.”