Why Hamilton's finest moment was also Bottas's best

"No more talking now, and that's very important" said Valtteri Bottas over the radio coming through Turn 12 on lap 47.

He could see the Mercedes of his team-mate Lewis Hamilton just a couple of seconds in front of him and knew exactly what was required. For the first time in his career, he had to win a grand prix by making a pass for the lead outside of the start phase. And he did exactly that.

Bottas spent the weeks before the United States Grand Prix underlining his determination to keep the world championship fight alive.

Realistically, he surely knew his hopes were little more than a mirage after throwing away a gilt-edged opportunity to gain ground on Hamilton by crashing at Hockenheim and then finishing eighth at the Hungaroring. But it was fitting that when Hamilton finally sealed the deal, Bottas delivered the best of his seven grand prix victories.

This was not the day on which Bottas was confirmed as a loser. Instead, he put to bed the memory of the end of last year when he slumped to fifth in the championship and, by his own admission, couldn't wait for the season to end. This year, he came back with a new edge, a renewed determination despite looking like he was beaten for good in 2018.

Although he came up short against Hamilton - and there's no shame in that - Bottas's fourth victory of the season proved that his strategy of chipping away at weaknesses is working. And he made it very clear after the race that he intends to continue that process next season.

"Winning was the only thing I could do to try and maintain the title hopes," said Bottas. "Obviously I did my part, which feels good, but Lewis was strong this weekend, as he always is, so he got some solid points and got the championship.

"I've got mixed feelings, really. As an individual weekend it was strong but being best of the rest doesn't feel good. It's my best season in Formula 1 so far, so that's good and, looking at other positives, I've made huge gains in many areas, in terms of race pace and everything. I just look forward to next year - it's a new opportunity."

The foundation stone for Bottas's victory was his fifth pole position of the season in what proved to be a challenging qualifying session.

With the track conditions worsening his first run was good enough for pole as everyone struggled for grip second time around. With Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull all closely matched, anyone could have been up front - although Charles Leclerc was always on the back foot thanks to having to revert to a spec-two Ferrari engine rather than the spec three used from Belgium onwards after an oil leak struck in FP3.

Bottas's launch was good enough to ensure he was ahead at Turn 1, covering the inside line to prevent a serious attack from the fast-starting Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver was side-by-side with Sebastian Vettel up the hill to the Turn 1 left-hander, opting to sling the car around the outside line to make sure he had second place.

The key question was would one stop win the day? And given the anticipated pace difference of Hamilton once the cars behind were on fresh mediums, could he even hang on to the second place from Verstappen if Bottas did pass him?

The downside was that this meant he had the slightest of overlaps with Bottas at the exit of the corner, with the right-rear of the Mercedes riding over the left-side edge of Verstappen's front wing. The wing folded then sprung back into place, but Verstappen asked for the loads to be checked halfway round the lap and was told that the balance had been impacted. That damage, combined with some unexplained floor damage that started to show on lap five, meant Verstappen's balance shifted forward and likely cost him a little performance as well as accelerating the tyre degradation.

Hamilton, meanwhile, had a barnstorming first lap to catapult himself into contention. He was unhappy with his pace in qualifying and started fifth, but drew alongside fourth-fastest qualifier Leclerc after the launch. With the outside line for Turn 2 and Leclerc having Vettel's Ferrari in front of him and removing the option to brake very late, it was easy to complete the move. But having tracked Vettel through most of the esses, he launched a bold and opportunistic move around the outside of the Turn 8 right-hander, completing the pass into the left-hander that ends the long, sweeping sequence. It was a race-changing move.

Ahead, Bottas immediately established himself out of DRS range of Verstappen, who finished the first lap 1.235s behind. Initially, Verstappen was only fractionally slower than both the lead Mercedes and Hamilton behind, losing just under a tenth per lap on average to Bottas, but soon the leader started to pull three and a half tenths per lap. By the time Verstappen pitted for a relatively early stop in an attempt to undercut the leader at the end of lap 13 the gap had grown to 3.781s.

Verstappen's outlap pace threatened Bottas so Mercedes had to respond and bring him in.

The Finn stopped at the end of the next lap, emerging from the pits just in front of Verstappen but with enough of a cushion not to be under serious threat from the Red Bull driver, who was warned to "just be sensible" shortly after Bottas emerged ahead.

With all of the top five qualifiers starting on medium Pirellis, both took hards. But while Verstappen's early move committed the pair to two-stop strategies, Hamilton still had a single stop in mind so extended his stint. Bottas had emerged from the pits with a deficit of 16s to Hamilton, which had dropped to 15.057s by the end of his outlap.

Bottas slashed into this advantage at a rate of, on average, 1.8s a lap and would have avoided having to pass his team-mate on track had Hamilton not disregarded the initial call to stop at the end of lap 23 in his determination to extend as long as possible. Bottas breezed past him on the back straight, with Hamilton peeling into the pits to take hards next time round.

By this stage, while not entirely out of the picture, it was clear Verstappen wasn't a serious victory threat. He had slipped to 5.5s behind Bottas, a gap that continued to increase slowly once Hamilton was out of the way. But the key question now was would one stop win the day? And given the anticipated pace difference of Hamilton once the cars behind were on fresh mediums, could he hang on even to the second place from Verstappen if Bottas did pass him?

Hamilton came out of the pits almost 22s behind Bottas, with Verstappen around 16s clear. From laps 26-33, Hamilton was the fastest man on track, 1.045s a lap faster than Bottas - with Verstappen a tenth and a half off that. During that phase, Hamilton was mindful (and regularly reminded) of the need to ensure he didn't take too much out of his tyres so wasn't flat out, but was focused on trying to win rather than bank a safe second ahead of Verstappen.

Verstappen again was the first to stop, for fresh mediums at the end of lap 34, with Bottas responding a lap later and taking the same tyre to set the stage for the final chase. By the end of Bottas's outlap, Hamilton led by 9.134s on 12-lap-old hards, with Bottas 4.835s clear of Verstappen.

Bottas's first flying lap slashed that lead to 5.995s, with a rapid swap anticipated. But thereafter, things became far more stable and it was more about Bottas chipping away when he could. Hamilton was driving with remarkable consistency, with each of the next eight laps within 0.271s of each other.

Bottas was taking his time, adopting a conservative approach that hinted Hamilton might be able to hang on - with the world champion also losing less time among the backmarkers. But with the gap dropping from 2.5s at the end of lap 46 to 1.9s next time round, it was clear a pass was inevitable. As he went in for the kill, he demanded radio silence.

Hamilton went a little wide in the Turn 11 hairpin leading onto the back straight on lap 51, giving Bottas his chance. With the DRS deployed, he pulled alongside Hamilton as they headed to the left-hander at Turn 12. Hamilton was on the inside, Bottas couldn't quite get round him and briefly took to the runoff. Next time round, it was easy and Bottas made the move using the DRS before they even reached the corner. With four and a half laps left, it was job done.

But Hamilton still had work to do. Having arguably pushed the tyres harder than was sensible in a forlorn attempt to keep Bottas at bay, he had less in his Pirellis than he might have done to repulse Verstappen. The Dutchman had closed from 4.7s behind to 3.7s during the two laps the Mercedes drivers battled, and continued to chip away.

Hamilton was just one second clear of Verstappen when the right-rear brake disc of Kevin Magnussen's Haas gave up the ghost at Turn 12. With the key overtaking chance on the track neutralised for the duo's final two times past, Hamilton was able to hold on. Verstappen was confident he would have been second, not third, without the yellows.

But what of Ferrari? It was an awful weekend for the form team of the second half of the year. Vettel's race went from bad to worse after being passed by Hamilton, with Leclerc then diving up the inside into Turn 11 and making the pass stick on the back straight for fourth. Vettel then fell behind Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, complaining of a problem causing a lack of grip but lapping at similar pace to Leclerc, before the right-rear suspension collapsed coming through the Turn 8 sweep.

"It was clear within a couple of corners that I was quite far off and eaten up by the cars behind so I was trying to resist but not resist too hard because I could feel it wouldn't make much sense," said Vettel.

"After a couple of laps I got used to it, the behaviour of the car, which felt a bit odd, and it got a bit better when the tyres were coming up but it is always tricky in the first lap, it always feels a bit better after a couple of laps when everything starts to calm down. Obviously we had the failure in the end."

The debate is no longer whether Hamilton is an all-time great - that has been answered emphatically. It's whether he might be the greatest

Leclerc, meanwhile, held fourth place for the duration, making a second stop later in the race to secure fastest lap. Notwithstanding Leclerc being on the old engine spec and Vettel's problems, it wasn't a strong weekend for Ferrari.

The technical directive related to systems monitoring the 100kg/h maximum fuel flow limit triggered by Red Bull was hinted at as the cause - the suggestion being it might be possible to trick the monitoring system by ensuring the flow is legal at the intermittent measured points but boosted in the tiny fractions of a second between those - with Verstappen quipping after the race "that's what happens when you stop cheating" of Ferrari's performance.

Ferrari has been found guilty of nothing - and hasn't even been directly accused of anything. But it was clear that there were those in the Mercedes and Red Bull camps who felt this was the cause of the Ferrari straightline speed advantage. For whatever reason, after the technical directive, the GPS data showed its advantage, around six tenths on the main straight at Suzuka, was slashed to around a third of that in qualifying at Austin.

Correlation does not equal causation and Ferrari insisted this was not the reason for its difficult weekend but, as the technical directive itself highlighted, any such offence would be justifiably considered a "serious breach".

Whatever the cause, Ferrari was simply not at the races. This made it a three-horse race up front, with the unfortunate Alex Albon managing a distant fifth after stopping at the end of the first lap thanks to being squeezed between Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr's McLaren at the first corner. With no hard tyres available thanks to 'cold cracking' of that set earlier in the weekend, he had to make three stops but to his credit still managed to defeat the midfield.

But while this was Bottas's day, it's Hamilton's year. As he reflected on his sixth world championship he was visibly affected by what is a momentous achievement by the standards of all except seven-time champion Michael Schumacher.

On a day that started unpromisingly, a battling race performance had given him a shot at victory to remind everyone of his fighting spirit. The team perhaps would have rather he settled for an easy second place, but instead he struck out for the victory - as he always does.

"I wasn't even looking at the blue car that was ahead of me, I was looking at Valtteri and that's how I'm built, I'm always looking and wondering," said Hamilton. "I was like, don't give me the times of the car ahead of me [Verstappen], I want to know the times of the lead car because that's the one I'm trying to beat.

"That's how I'm wired. There was a long way to go on those hard tyres, so I tried not to doubt that we could make it. But Valtteri did a great job today so hats off to him and I'm really genuinely pleased for him and he's done a fantastic job this year."

At 34, Hamilton is at the peak of his powers and still climbing. Yes, he's been in the pre-eminent team of this era of Formula 1 but he earned that position through his continued excellence. The car might define the performance potential but it's down to the driver to extract it and Hamilton has done that consistently well during his 13 seasons in F1.

With the smart money on a seventh title next year, the debate is no longer whether Hamilton is an all-time great - that has been answered emphatically. It's whether he might be the greatest.