A fight in a Mercedes? Hamilton accused Bottas of a bad result from the Mexican GP. Do you agree with him?

The Mexican Grand Prix was a very attractive spectacle, but it also brought a lot of controversy. Something happened at the start of the race that Valtteri Bottas will probably not be forgiven right away. What’s more, Lewis Hamilton sees it quite clearly. Do you agree with his statement?

Five lights out and we’re ready to race! Bottas hasn’t got off to a good start at all, but Max Verstappen has a brilliant drive. After a few more metres, the Finnish driver pushes on Hamilton, clearing the way for Verstappen into the first corner.

The Red Bull driver, running on a clear track, takes the race lead with this manoeuvre! Also as a result of the chaos at the first corner, Sergio Pérez moves into third position.

And here, according to many fans and experts, was the turning point of the race. Why? For several reasons. Firstly, Red Bull had a really good race pace. We’ve all had a chance to see that.

As soon as Verstappen set his furious pace, Hamilton began to lose ground on the race leader and was absolutely unable to match his pace. That has to be admitted.

Secondly, track position at that point was clearly going to the Red Bull, who had two very strong cars in front.

And if we take this factor into account, we come to the third, equally important point. Given the speed and power of the two Red Bulls, then, the only hope for a Mercedes victory lay in some well thought out strategy.

However, that was shot away from the Mercedes on the exit of Turn 1 by Daniel Ricciardo when he collided with Bottas. It should be noted, this is a typical racing incident. But it might not have happened if the Finnish driver had stayed a little further away from the inside of Turn 1.

However, in the interests of objectivity, we have to say that Bottas had Pérez on his left. But the truth is that on the outside of Turn 1, the Mercedes driver would still have had some space there, even after Pérez went off the track.

We’ve seen a number of similar incidents in the past and the fact remains that the driver, in this case Ricciardo, can do nothing about the situation and will similarly “shoot down” the driver in front of him.

Anyway, now let’s look at how Hamilton saw the situation. “I imagined it completely differently (the start – ed.), in the sense that Valtteri would have a better start and I might get behind him,” Hamilton explained in an interview with RaceFans.

“In the end I was next to him, which was obviously good. And then I covered my part of the track and tried to make sure there was no room to overtake. So I tried to keep the Red Bull that I saw behind me in the mirror behind me,” he continues.

“I thought Valtteri would do the same on his side, but obviously he left the door open for Max. He then did a great job of braking into the first corner and I had no chance on the dirt track,” Hamilton added.

“That made the race a lot harder. When you only have one car in front, your opponent can tactically think about the right strategy,” he concluded.

His words were subsequently confirmed by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Based on his words, he said this was definitely not meant to be. We can probably all imagine what might have happened in the Mercedes garage afterwards.

Whether or not you agree with Lewis Hamilton’s words is up to you. In any case, it does raise one fundamental question. Can we really interpret Bottas’s actions as having spoiled, or even significantly complicated, the race for his team?

As we wrote above, the answer is, according to many fans and experts, quite obvious.

F1, RaceFans