Why Bottas can't 'Rosberg' Hamilton

How do you beat Lewis Hamilton?

That's a question Valtteri Bottas will have been asking himself recently, sporadically coming up with a good answer but not the definitive one that will allow him to be victorious over a season.

This question might prove to be at the heart of whether or not the 2019 world championship battle is already over.

Hamilton has only been beaten by a team-mate over a season twice in 12 attempts. The first was by Jenson Button at McLaren in 2011 as Hamilton became swept up in a maelstrom of on-track incidents amid suspicions of distractions away from the circuit.

Hamilton is long becalmed, so well-balanced in his professional and personal lives, so there's little hope for Bottas there. Perhaps Nico Rosberg is a more recent, and potentially relevant, example to follow?

Rosberg won the 2016 championship partly thanks to luck, with Hamilton suffering a disproportionate number of the few significant Mercedes engine problems that occurred that season.

But Hamilton also left too many points on the table - eventually leading to a realisation that no matter how good you are, you must leave nothing to chance and take every score going. This has made him a more relentless competitor and closed the obvious chinks in his armour.

Add to that Rosberg's willingness to be ruthless in his dealings with Hamilton, who he knew inside-out given they were first team-mates in karting way back in 2000, and you have one answer as to how to beat Hamilton to the title.

Bottas's first problem is that the 2016 Hamilton is no longer who he's facing.

The evolved Hamilton is more robust, utterly in control and the odd bad weekends that occasionally, but consistently, cropped up have been eliminated. Each of the past three seasons have started, by his standards, relatively weakly but in no way can they be considered bad.

Hamilton described his performances in the early stages of this year as 'average', but average for him is still plenty good enough to lead the championship and win six of the first nine races. Bottas at his best has never had a run like that.

What Hamilton is now able to do is work with the car, get on top of it and then master it.

In both 2017 and '18, during the early stages of those seasons, he was at his least convincing and Bottas looked relatively good. That pattern has been repeated this year, albeit with Bottas initially much closer in terms of points.

Bottas is still yet to make sure he will remain at Mercedes in 2020, so given the tendency for his campaigns with the team to unravel he must keep up this level relative to Hamilton for a while yet simply to ensure he stays on.

Let's assume Bottas maintains his level, what then? He has made it clear that he is determined to fight for the championship and, given his being out of title contention was one of the justifications for team orders robbing him of a Russian Grand Prix victory last year, staying within range of Hamilton is clearly the minimum he will accept.

It's unrealistic to believe Bottas can consistently beat Hamilton, not unless some kind of sudden decline sets in for the five-time world champion - who recently said he feels he can go on for another five years in F1. What Bottas can do is stay close by delivering at or close to his best at the highest possible rate. The question then is can he destabilise Hamilton?

The collision on the first lap of the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, when Rosberg moved right to defend against Hamilton out of Turn 3 and both ended up out of the race, was that season's defining moment.

The team shared the blame, Hamilton felt he had been let down and that some factions favoured Rosberg, and it created a bad atmosphere.

Rosberg thrived in this environment, got the best out of himself while Hamilton couldn't and, combined with some good luck, Rosberg nicked the title.

So, Bottas 'does a Rosberg' and might history repeat itself?

After all, Hamilton has been rock solid since the start of 2017 but has never faced a serious threat from inside the team, so it's a scab Bottas could attempt to pick at with his own Rosbergesque shenanigans.

But even if Bottas were willing to trigger a civil war with Hamilton, which seems unlikely given his temperament, it would backfire. Rosberg was well-established at Mercedes having been at the team three seasons longer than Hamilton, so was on firmer ground.

Bottas is in the position where if he caused problems he would be out the door as sure as he would be if he underperformed. It's neither a path he can go down, nor one he would want to go down. Hamilton's leadership is unquestioned, while Mercedes will not be willing to get into the situation it did previously when everyone was walking on eggshells and desperate not to be seen to favour one over the other.

If you invest energy in managing internal tensions, the risk is you are exposed to threats from outside. And Hamilton and the team are also wise to such tricks.

Speaking at the Spanish GP, off the back of his defeat to Bottas in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Hamilton explained how any such situations are nipped in the bud and why there's no chance this will go down the 2014-16 route.

This was in response to a question about Toto Wolff suggesting he saw a little of Hamilton v Rosberg in the battle between Bottas and Hamilton at the first turn in Baku.

"He has seen a glimpse of that but what's really important is we pull together as a team," said Lewis. "We've discussed it and hopefully rectified it and that won't spring up again. Whereas what happened before, an individual just continued to go down that route. That's not what we have here."

The only question is whether next time they are side by side on track, as they were in Baku when Hamilton could have hung his team-mate out to dry but likely cost Bottas places in doing so, things will get a little more aggressive.

As Hamilton also said in Spain "we're not going to be touching, that's for sure, but in terms of giving up positions, that won't happen again". Perhaps how aggressive Hamilton is next time will be a measure of how seriously he takes Bottas as a threat?

But as Bottas can't go down the path of war, if he is to have a chance of beating Hamilton, there's only one way: brute force. That means beating him more often than not in qualifying, and doing the same in the race. History tells us that's desperately unlikely.