Wolff spoke to Horner over his claim Mercedes “favours” Hamilton

2020 Italian Grand Prix

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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff spoke to Christian Horner following the Red Bull chief’s recent claim the world champions are giving preferential treatment to Lewis Hamilton.

Horner was quoted saying it was “obvious” Mercedes was favouring Hamilton over Valtteri Bottas to ensure the six-times champion wins a record seventh title this year.

Mercedes has always insisted it gives its drivers equal treatment as far as possible. This includes alternating which driver gets to specify their running order in qualifying, as was the case in today’s session.

“There is no such thing as prioritising one driver versus the other,” said Wolff. “We have always played it completely open, transparent and fair and this is how we are going to continue.”

Horner said Mercedes’ strategy in Spa was evidence of them favouring Hamilton, as they did not give Bottas the opportunity to make a second pit stop and challenge his team mate for the lead.

“I spoke to him about that,” said Wolff. “He said: ‘Why didn’t you pit Valtteri for the second stop?’ And I said ‘if we would have known that the two-stop was quicker, we would have pitted Lewis as well’.”

The two Mercedes drivers were running ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull at the time.

“In hindsight the two-stop was the better strategy,” Wolff continued, “but we didn’t want to lose position against Max because it was not clear whether we would beat Max on track.

“Then I said to him: ‘Why didn’t you pit Max for a second stop, you could have beaten us?’ He said: ‘Well, we weren’t sure whether we would be able to overtake Ricciardo’.

“Well hello, here we go, it’s exactly the same situation.”

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111 comments on “Wolff spoke to Horner over his claim Mercedes “favours” Hamilton”

  1. Christian Horner needs to take a look in the mirror, instead of projecting.

    1. Looking at the article photo would just love to see toto drop the nut on horners nose.

      1. You-ah clothes. Give them to me. Now.

        1. You-ah clothes. Give them to me. Now.

          I rarely post, but this with the pic in the story just made me laugh. Well-played.

    2. Hats off to Horner. He knows his only hope is for inter Mercedes squabbles.

      Nothing would suit Redbul better than another Silverstone blowout, caused for the most part by the two Mercedes drivers pushing themselves to their limits.

      Redbull’s desperation has already caused them shoot themselves in the foot, now they’re looking to Mercedes to do the same.

    3. This is pretty much Horner playing politics trying to use his foul mouth to destabilise this rivals by making use of the media.

      1. He is only responding to Hamilton’s comments! They could just keep their thoughts to themselves, but then again F1 is a show so…

      2. ‘Foul mouth’ ??? You are a delicate little flower arent you.

        1. Touché

    4. Horner is the biggest hypocrite in f1

  2. Mercedes isn’t happy with everything, they even need to control the truth too. The sport looking more and more like wwe.

      1. Unfortunately not Rott

    1. It’s not that, it’s that some people just hate losing fair and square.

  3. Horner needs to see a good psychiatrist. Asking Mercedes why they didn’t run a different strategy to finish 1-2 instead of the strategy they used to finish 1-2 whilst his team used the same “flawed” strategy to finish on the podium.

    1. That is not the point.. the 1/2 was inevitable but the one winning was a result of the choices made by Merc.

      1. That’s very much the point. In any case Verstappen has had such dubious strategies- enter Spanish GP 2016. So OP is right- pot, kettle black.

  4. The Spiderman meme of two of them both identically pointing at each other would work SO well here.

  5. Two. The times Wolff has sacrificed the faster Valtteri in Sochi while the drivers championship was still open.

    1. Sorry, meant to say “open”

      1. @uneedafinn2win it would seem that a number of posters here are interpreting your post as implying Bottas was in contention for the 2018 title and are scorning for you.

        Whilst technically Bottas could still mathematically win the World Drivers Championship in 2018, he was 110 points behind Hamilton and 70 points behind Vettel with a theoretical maximum total of 150 points available before the Russian Grand Prix took place.

        It would therefore mean that, in order for Bottas to have taken the lead in the World Drivers Championship, he would have needed to outscore Vettel by 11.7 points per round over the next six rounds and Hamilton by about 18.3 points per round. Alternatively, he would need to win the next five races back to back with Hamilton finishing in 9th or lower and Vettel finishing 5th or lower to have a hope of catching both drivers before the final race of the season.

        Of course, that also assumes that Bottas would be the one winning those races, which isn’t guaranteed given Kimi and Verstappen also outscored Bottas in the final races of 2018. Effectively, short of Hamilton, Kimi, Vettel and Verstappen all having mass breakdowns or accidents that took all four of them out of the race at the same time, the odds of Bottas winning the title in 2018 would seem slim.

        Now, if it was a case of sacrificing Bottas’s race in Russia to bolster Hamilton against a potential threat from Vettel, then that is a rather different discussion.

        1. Oh I don’t pay attention to the children here, the facts remain the same. The fastest man on track was ordered to relinquish the win. I suppose they don’t remember 1999, anyway
          But thank you for doing the math and participating,

          1. If bottas was the fastest man why didnt he run away from Hamilton? Oh because he was simply to slow that in fact vettel was right behind the 2 mercs. A scary situation. So get real

          2. Plus both hamilton would be fighting bottas and bottas would defend hard therefore chew up tires and give the win potentially to vettel. So thing BIG!

          3. Iskandar Mazlan
            6th September 2020, 0:20

            Not sure which race .. Lewis just ask Bottas to speed up

          4. Haha, mathematically the team makes decision for the best of them not for a rogue fans like you.

            Bottas had 0 chance to win that title realistically. You have to use logic as well as pure numbers.

          5. @uneedafinn2win You don’t pay attention to the “children”, “facts” you mean? Did you even read anon’s post on how ludicrous your claims are that Bottas still had a shot at the WDC?

            In hindsight Letting Hamilton win in Russia was a mistake. Yet Ferrari had the much faster car since Germany. Mercedes had been lucky that Vettel kept spinning off and throwing points away like in Germany and Monza. Yet how were they to know upfront that Vettel would keep blundering like that and/or poorly performing like in Hungary and Singapore? Potentially Vettel could have won all races after that and taken the title.

    2. Hamilton was near 100 points ahead of Bottas going into Russia, made sense for Merc to start backing Hamilton as Ferrari were looking very quick overall for much of the season e.g

      https://www.racefans.net/2018/08/06/2018-f1-car-performance-mercedes-ferrari-quickest/

    3. Hahaha really? Bottas was 100 points behind Hamilton and had no chance of winning the title.

      1. He had a change of winning the race.. in fact he would have..

        1. Yes much like Ricciardo at the Spanish GP in 2016, or even Webber with a championship in Abu Dhabi in 2010.

          1. First of it’s painfully obvious red bull stole the win from ricciardo in spain 2016 and handed it to max in a silver platter. Max was behind vettel the whole race and only past ricciardo through the pits on the better strat. That was the first time anyone with any racing knowledge knew red bull would support max over ricciardo despite ricciardo being faster

    4. @uneedafinn2win

      Two. The race wins Wolff gifted to Bottas to compensate.
      Suzuka and Austin 2019.
      How many times had Horner give something back to Albon (or Gasly, or Kvyat)?

      1. Iskandar Mazlan
        6th September 2020, 0:23

        Agree. Lewis could have won Suzuka but was repeatedly ask to pit 2nd time. Not sure about Austin but Lewis mysteriously qualified 4th or 5th due to steering issue?

    5. Remember yesterday when lewis and bottas were 0.100 apart yeah that’s definitely team ordered. And remember every single race this year were max was 5.000 seconds faster then albon yeah that was all fair

  6. Come on.
    Does anyone genuinely believe that Bottas is anything more than a support act?

    Valtteri is a damn fine driver. If he wasn’t then he wouldn’t have that seat. He also knows why he has that seat.

    1. Exactly, and that’s why Bottas never pressures Hamilton when the opportunity for an overtake arises.

      1. You must have missed Silverstone 2019

        1. Iskandar Mazlan
          6th September 2020, 0:27

          I still think Lewis purposely slowed down and let Bottas pass after the initial wheel-to-wheel. Lewis had 1-stop in mind and must ensure Bottas pit 1st with another soft tyres. Then Bottas needs to pit 2nd time for medium.

    2. Yes, but Horner is next to last on being the right guy to complain about it.

      I remember Malaysia 2013 when Vettel overuled his orders and won the race and he only said something like “c’mon, Seb, don’t be that guy…”

      And Webber said later he knew that team wouldn’t do a thing about it. And guess what? They didn’t.

      Horner has been unberable for a good few years already. Should take a look at himself and his work little better sometimes.

      1. Remember Baku when Verstappen took out Ricciardo by weaving and moving under braking? No action from Horner against Verstappen who had just ensured double dnf and was the main culprit for the crash.

    3. @nullapax the problem is, a lot of people are wondering why Horner would be so keen for Mercedes to have adopted a strategy that would have dropped Bottas behind both Verstappen and Ricciardo in the Belgian Grand Prix – particularly when Ricciardo had a major straight line speed advantage over Bottas.

      Even with fresh tyres and DRS, with Ricciardo steadily increasing his pace and being 16kph faster on the Kemmel straight than Bottas, he could have been a very difficult target to pass – and you can’t help but suspect that Horner would have perhaps hoped that Bottas might have been held up for long enough with such a strategy for him to lose 2nd place to Verstappen if Mercedes had tried that in Spa.

      Indeed, you have Horner admitting that they didn’t pit Verstappen for a two stopper because they didn’t want to risk getting stuck behind Ricciardo – so you have Horner basically asking why Mercedes didn’t allow Bottas to adopt a strategy that Red Bull themselves decided was potentially inferior.

      In that respect, it comes across as a pretty clumsy piece of politicking by Horner in the vague hope that he might trigger situations that he could then exploit for his drivers.

      1. Horner better be careful he doesn’t trigger a situation where Mercedes steal Verstappen !

  7. Utter bull faecal matter from Horner. Look at the kettle calling the pot black!

  8. I do not understand Horner’s question in pitting Bottas a second time in Belgium. Mercedes do not try to manipulate the race outcome by giving different strategies. Now, this has been since Austria, and I am sure everyone of us understands what Horner is doing. Enough is enough. I get it that you have to answer questions from the press and media, but this is ridiculous. Horner just has nothing to do at the moment.

    1. He is just deflecting from the reality that awaits him tomorrow . That mechanical dark cloud and lack of innovation within his camp.

  9. Horner is as sure they are giving Ham preferential treatment as he is that the gaps will close once the FIA stop the Mercedes party mode.

    1. Love too see Horner lose and squirm and look for excuses instead of admitting he’s to total gob….e

  10. Just like most involved in F1, Toto (and Christian) underestimate the data available to common fans nowadays. They can rewatch races to come to their own conclusions.
    Hamilton was brought in to be the favourite, just like Max has become so at Red Bull. Rehashing race strategies this season would only confirm it.
    If only the competition on track was half as interesting as this ‘banter’.

    1. Yeah, infact Mercedes allowed Rosberg to steal a championship from him in 2016, plus gifted Bottas two wins last year, suzuka and Austin.
      How many times had Horner NOT helped Verstappen with the strategy?
      I’ll wait.

      1. Yes of course, Merc deliberately sabotaged 44 in Malaysia so Rosberg could win

        1. Iskandar Mazlan
          6th September 2020, 0:37

          Actually after Malaysia 2016, Lewis had 2 other key moments :
          1. Bad start in Japan then cannot pass Max for 2nd. Lost 3 points.
          2. If Max maintain 2nd in Brazil without extra pitstop. Nico lose 3 points. Of course when Max pass Nico on the outside .. Nico could have crash. Toto personally talk to Max later about mixing with WDC contenders.

        2. So how about the reliability issues like stuck accelarator pedal in Sochi and another ers issue in Abu dhabi costing Rosberg title in 2014. Its a clear case of Mercedes favouring hamilton and sabotaging rosberg. Remove your tinfoil hat as that 2016 consipracy is getting too long in tooth now.

          1. Lol, Abu dhabi costing Rosberg the title in 2014? Are you kidding now? All that did was grow the gap from 17 points to 31 points.

            Which actually barely made up for all the technical issues that Hamilton had had through out 2014. How many Q3’s did Hamilton miss vs Rosberg?

            There was no conspiracy in 2016, but Hamilton clearly had much more technical issues than Rosberg:

            In Bahrain Hamilton got punted off by Bottas at turn 1. Dropped back to P9 and made it back to P3
            An ERS failure at the start of qualifying in China, relegating him to 22nd on the grid. He finished seventh.
            An ERS failure during Q3 in Russia, restricting the Mercedes driver to 10th on the grid. He finished second.
            An engine mode issue during the European GP. He finished fifth having started in 10th following a crash in qualifying.
            Hamilton had used all 5 of his season engine allocation by the mid way point Race 12 Spa, forcing him to start from 22nd on the grid, finished 3rd
            A hydraulics fault during Practice Two in Singapore which was cited as a critical factor in his defeat to Rosberg. He finished third.
            An engine blow-out in Malaysia which cost him an almost-certain victory.

            (quotes copied here and there)

          2. @f1osaurus
            Abu dhabi did NOT cost Rosberg the title in Malaysia.
            He won 5 races to Hamilton ‘s 11, started on a roll because of Lewis’ failure in Australia.
            Plus Nico went away unpunished from a clear CHEAT in Monaco and Spa.
            Get your facts straight

          3. @liko41 Ehm did you add my name by accident? Since it wasn;t me, but Chaitanya who claimed that.

  11. If Mercedes lets bottas have a 2nd pit stop in Belgium they would have pitted Hamilton as well. In fact knowing Mercedes they would have double stacked the cars.

  12. When it comes to Bottas, it’s a common strategy, when it’s for Hamilton, it’s fine to have a separate one.

    1. Yes they should have pitted Bottas and let him come out behind Max; because that has always worked out well for Bottas in the past.

    2. @balue except, in this instance, you’re suggesting to put him onto a strategy that Horner himself admitted was probably the worse one to put him on.

      I get the feeling that you’d be complaining either way in this case – if, as was the case in the race, they didn’t pit him, you’re complaining that they didn’t give him an alternative strategy. However, if he was put on that alternative strategy and he ended up losing a position, I get the impression you’d be accusing Mercedes of sabotaging Bottas and unnecessarily costing him a place.

    3. As we all saw in Silverstone, both cars didn’t follow the optimum strategy, and protecting 2nd place was not on the cards for Bottas even if it’s obvious to everyone his main objective is Hamilton, not Verstappen. The team then predictably gave Hamilton the optimum strategy. Now suddenly in Spa, it was for some reason vital for Bottas to protect 2nd place, and no alternative strategy to go for 1st was even considered, even if it could well have worked. There are other examples too, but then they even call him wingman outright and constantly praise Hamilton for the marketing value he brings to the team, so there’s no real doubt what their objectives are.

      Agree that Horner is being quite the hypocrite though. They even lost a fine driver and got stuck with a journeyman because of their blatant favoritism.

  13. Toto called Bottas an “excellent wingman”. His own words.

    The team has never ordered Hamilton to move over and give Bottas the win

    1. Probably because Bottas was never in a position to win a driver title against another team’s rival late in season while the other Merc driver was out of contention already.

    2. The team gave Bottas better strategy in order to let him win at least twice: austin ans suzuka 2019.
      Try again , try better.

      1. After Lewis was already sure to win the championship you mean? Great counter point that.

        1. and what about the inumerous times they pitted Bottas first when he was behind, to protect him from an undercut when their policy is to pit the driver ahead first?

          it needs to be really childish to believe he has any chance at any moment to challenge. He is a good driver but nowhere near good enough everywhere to be WDC. He has too many “ok” weekends in which he can’t come close to Hamilton at all.

          1. I agree. Bottas is 100% their number two driver. He was hired to be that and he’s fulfilling that role to perfection. But we don’t have to pretend he’s been actively told to let Lewis finish ahead of him for Lewis to become WDC in previous years. It’s happened.

            Horner is just stirring the pot after Bottas was told last race to not race Lewis, just like Hamilton was stirring the pot last race by making his comments about Albon not performing. A bit of tit for tat.

      2. @liko41
        Hamilton has no one but himself to blame for his bad strategy at those races. He qualified behind Bottas and was stuck behind a slower car (Seb in Suzuka, Max in Austin) so Merc decided to give him a different strategy.

        1. @kingshark Ferrari had the faster car in Suzuka though.

          In Austin Hamilton wasn’t on his best, but the strategy ruined any chance he had to fight for the win. Still he did end up in P2 starting from P5.

          1. @f1osaurus

            Ferrari had the faster car in Suzuka though.

            Only in qualifying. In the race Bottas was miles quicker than Vettel on the same strategy while Hamilton got beaten.

            As for Austin, if Hamilton mirrored Bottas’ strategy then he would have just been stuck behind Verstappen for the whole race. An alternate strategy was his only chance at victory.

        2. @kingshark
          LOL, you hamilton hat3rs really would need to watch yoursef from outside for a moment, just to understand how RIDICULOUS you look!

    3. David Bondo Ah the old “pull something out of context completely and make it sound like something sinister” approach.

      That race in Hungary, where Wolff made that remark, indeed Bottas was a great winbman for Hamilton. Not that he set out to help Hamilton. Either way Bottas was inconsequential for the podium himself, but he did help Hamilton take the win.

      Ferrari had a much faster car than Mercedes, but botched up Q3 because the track was wet. During the race Ferrari first needed to get past Bottas and he held them back for a long time. Enough so that they never were able to fight Hamilton for the win. He deserved praise for that even though he himself only ended up in P5.

  14. They would be stupid not to, one is a multi world champion (and won one before he even joined). The other screws up starts every three races.

    I like Bottas, but he is the inferior driver. He is there because he is good enough to score enough points consistently, while being a good team member, not crash when they race, while also not putting much pressure on Hamilton.

  15. Hilarious stuff really, considering what has been happening at Red Bull for the past couple of seasons! Having said that, even if Mercedes didn’t give Hamilton slight preferential treatment which it’s obvious he does receive, he’d still wipe the floor with Bottas over the course of a race 9 times out of 10.

  16. Well yes Merc do favour Hamilton when push comes to shove, but for the man who runs the one driver team to call Wolff out over it?

  17. Mercedes don’t favour Hamilton. They just don’t let Bottas do what Rosberg (and Button a McLaren) did to unsettle Hamilton and try to win that way over a season. It’s really that simple. And in part he was chosen as team mate precisely because he’s a meticulously fair driver who probably wouldn’t do any different anyhow.

    Horner, hmm. At some point some of the pressure Ferrari principals get to feel will surely start coming his way. He has a star driver who has been bailing them out, but the team is now going backwards. He should focus on his own job, because compared to Wolff, his performance isn’t so impressive. Work to do.

    1. @david-br

      Mercedes don’t favour Hamilton. They just don’t let Bottas do what Rosberg (and Button a McLaren) did to unsettle Hamilton and try to win that way over a season.

      Protecting than?

      1. @johnrkh Protecting Hamilton from off-track tactics, or dubious on-track tactics, to unsettle him (and cause divisions within the wider team)? I think so. Wolff was quite explicit about not wanting, ever, any repetition of 2016. Remember Hamilton thought about walking away, it was that bad. Hamilton probably just says he wants equal treatment and fair racing. If Mercedes allowed a team mate to cause conflict as a means to win over a season, in the worst case scenario, they lose the championship to a close rival, Hamilton walks away (as he did from McLaren) and Mercedes are left with big internal divisions. Instead, since 2016, they’ve had four years of tranquil dominance.

        1. every little crisis that happened in that team between 14-16 was initiated by Nico. The mistake in Q3 in Monaco, pushing him out on Canada, puncturing his tyre in Spa, complaining he was going too slow in China, going straight out of the track to push him out on Austria..

          ..Nico used everything he had in hand, and more than once, the team came out losing because of it.

          1. True, but I do have some sympathy for Rosberg. He helped develop a title winning car, saw off Schumacher, only to have his closest F1 mate/rival arrive and start winning the championships. But equally you can see why Mercedes would back Hamilton, especially as he wasn’t the one eroding team cohesion as part of his strategy (something Rosberg learned from Button at McLaren). McLaren pivoted totally the wrong way hiring Button alongside Hamilton and allowing the latter to feel ousted from the team. For what? Mercedes were smart enough to avoid the same mistake.

          2. Almost sounds like Rosberg was fighting for a Championship.

            Unlike Bottas, who is just driving in circles, thinking he can beat Hamilton.

            That Rosberg left F1 has been detrimental to F1.

    2. Iskandar Mazlan
      6th September 2020, 0:43

      That may explain why Russell did not get the seat in 2021? Russell won F1 eSports beating Leclerc Norris. Bottas join few races but finish very low. I read somewhere Bottas is a safer option ..

      1. Maybe, but Mercedes face a conundrum because Bottas’s demeanour means he seldom makes things happen on track. He drives well but I can’t see him leading a team to a championship against strong rivals elsewhere. So they probably need someone like Russell as a replacement for Hamilton. At the same time, they could hire Russell fairly safely I think, I can’t see him deliberately generating strife if he knew he’d be leading the team in a year or two. He could also learn from Hamilton.

      2. Maybe the fact that Russel already had a signed Williams contract for 2021 explains why Russell is at Williams for 2021?

        If Russell is not at Mercedes for 2022 you might have a point, but for 2021 clearly not.

    3. Mercedes don’t favour Hamilton. They just don’t let Bottas do what Rosberg (and Button a McLaren) did to unsettle Hamilton and try to win that way over a season. It’s really that simple.

      Disagree. It seems you don’t quite believe it either, you kinda responded to yourself anyway in the following sentence. Bottas doesn’t seem to be that kind of guy, to pull the strings here and there to unsettle the opposition, team mate or not. If once in a while he makes some comments that seem “political”…. it just happened.

      1. @mg1982 Nope, it’s clear that Mercedes are managing the situation much more than they ever were with Rosberg.

        They don’t allow Hamilton to use a different strategy to beat Bottas anymore. Hamilton won in Silverstone by going long and then for a one stop and Bottas had it in his head that he was robbed. He was simply beaten, but when a bad feeling like that festers it gets worse and unsportsmanlike behavior does come out at some point.

        Hamilton wasn’t allowed to attack an incredibly slow driving Bottas in Austria either. While the sane thing to do was to let Hamilton go in front of the struggling Bottas to at least secue P2. Wolff didn’t want Bottas pouting so they let Hamilton languish and lose the position.

        The lengths they go through to keep the peace in the team are ridiculous and pretty much always to the detriment of Hamilton. Although the end result is probably more to the benefit of Hamilton and Mercedes as a whole, because they wouldn’t want don’t want Bottas to act like as vindictive and destructive as Rosberg did. That cost the team tons of points.

        To be fair, while Bottas does seem like a fair guy, Rosberg never needed much encouragement to be unsportsmanlike. He pretty much invented his shtick of dirty driving with an innocent face. Oh I exceeded the lap delta, well I couldn’t see it on my dash. Oh I set the pole while I was supposed to be “ready to come to a full stop”, well I braked a bit early for that one corner. Oh yes I rammed Hamilton on purpose, but only to prove a point. Oh I drove backwards onto the track, but I didn’t mean to disturb anyone’s qualifying.

      2. @mg1982 I agree entirely with @f1osaurus . Mercedes now manage internal conflict above all and that actually disfavours Hamilton just as much when he’s almost invariably quicker. I don’t see how I’m contradicting myself. It’s not favouring one driver to exclude use of tactics on-track and off-track designed to ‘get in Hamilton’s head’ as Button put it. I mean, both he and Rosberg are explicit about what they did to beat Hamilton for one season, boasting about it, and the cost was an erosion of trust and good will throughout the team, not just between the two drivers. It’s important to pay attention to that point, Wolff makes it repeatedly. They don’t want one driver working the wider team against the other.

  18. Other than the irony of this comment coming from anyone at Red Bull, maybe if Christian and co. concentrated on their own team and performance for 5 minutes, instead of everyone else, they’d actually improve enough to give their favoured son a championship winning car?

  19. What’s clearly obvious is Redbull is too busy sticking their nose into other teams’ business while they are the ones who favor one driver.

    1. Rott
      I like your comment. You’re absolutely right.

  20. Just too too funny!
    Horner????
    Toto 1 0 Horner

  21. As if there has a more favored driver than Max in the first 70 years of F1! Quite amusing Christian :-)

    1. A friendly reminder that Juan Manuel Fangio once had his teammate give up his car mid-race because his own failed.

  22. Its case where neither Wolff nor Horner is wrong.

  23. They don’t need to favour their number 2 because he’s rubbish enough to make an average driver like Ham look good!

    1. Bwaahaaa
      That’s as funny as and it may get a nibble from the Hamilton loving trolls :)

    2. Like all greats, just an average driver who always do enough to be faster than anyone else. His laps look so flawles everyone must think they could do it, if they just made 0 mistakes.

  24. Horner is such a troll.

  25. It’s all mind games; Wolff to Horner, Horner to Ferrari, Ferrari to RP, blah, blah. Put away the handbags ladies and get on with racing.

  26. This year, Hamilton does not get blatant perferential treatment. I suspect because they are so far ahead of Ferrari.

    1. @jureo Sorry what? They give Albon the most ridiculous strategies which no one else is using, clearly just to test the water for Verstappen’s pitstop or to gain data or whatever, but they are ruining Albon’s races (Spain on hards and Spa on soft)

      You might have also missed the memo from Marko who stated that Red Bull does regularly not have enough new parts and then of course Albon gets the old parts.

      1. @f1osaurus I said Hamilton is not getting preferential treatment as blatantly as last year.

        Verstappen is getting better equipment (Says the team), preferential treatment, better strategy, and Albon is doing a fine job getting out of the way.

        Kinda like Bottas. They gave Hamilton tow, but he did his best to ruin his race on his own. Bombing at the start, and then he was nowhere.

        1. @jureo Oh, my bad. Sorry!

  27. Bottas is an excellent driver but there is something making him incomplete to challenge Hamilton. He seems hesitant in overtakes quite often, diffident to some preconceived plan.

    He will never be world champion as a result. Whichever team mate he has, Hamilton, Russel, Vettel, Verstappen…..

    That minute bit of special is not there.

    Perhaps that is why he is still in that seat, he pushes Hamilton but can’t beat him. Bottas hampers himself rather than the team favouring Hamilton.

    1. Bottas has admitted that he struggles with the loss of grip when following closely to a car in front. Hamilton is slightly less affected.

      So then Bottas only chance is getting pole. Because of that, it seems like he is putting full focus on Q3 setup rather than (partly) on race setup. Which makes him even slower in the race. Especially against Verstappen who can fully focus on race setup since Verstappen is not getting pole anyway and usually has no threat for P3 in Q3 from behind either.

      Besides for red Bull it’s better to be behind a bit more in Q3 anyway. As long as they get P3. It’s good to pretend it’s just the engine and then have the pure race setup to perform on par with Mercedes in the race. Then at least they can claim Verstappen is “outperforming the car”. Or imply some form of unfairness since by their narrative Mercedes is just winning with the twist of an engine mode knob.

      Bottas is like Ricciardo in the sense that he is fast (although perhaps not the outright fastest) but at the same time reasonably faultless. That’s what help Ricciardo destroy Vettel and beat Verstappen. I guess we will never know if Bottas could do the same with Verstappen but at least that he would destroy Vettel is higly likely.

  28. It’s a multi-21-faceted issue.

  29. Blaize Falconberger (@)
    6th September 2020, 13:02

    There’s a staggering unwillingness on this thread to acknowledge Hamilton’s superiority as a driver.

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