Lewis Hamilton Explains the Key to Pipping Bottas to Pole at the Very End

Over this season, Lewis Hamilton has been impressive when it came to qualifying sessions. Despite looking like a contender for P2, suddenly, the Briton manages to deliver a stunning lap in Q3 that helps him get past his teammate for pole by incredibly tiny margins. Lewis felt that pushing his car to the limit helped him gain those fine margins.

During an interview with ZiggoSport, Lewis pointed out the reason behind his capability to deliver at the right time. “It’s down to feel and pushing to the limit and putting all the pieces to the puzzle together in a rush,” he said.

Over almost every single race weekend, Valtteri Bottas has always looked to be the better. But as the weekend progresses and qualifying arrives, Lewis would take over the domination from his teammate.

“When you get to qualifying, sometimes you have half the puzzle done. Sometimes you have the whole thing done. Sometimes you have less,” he said.

“And you have to throw it all together and hope it comes together.”

If at all the six-time world champion missed out on taking his pole in qualifying, he would come out as the better in the race. That has been the case of the F1’s 2020 season.

Why Lewis Hamilton might finish ahead of his teammate in Turkey

Hamilton has always looked like the better of the two when it came to the race. There could be a couple of reasons behind such dominance.

One is that the Briton has managed to pile up the pressure on the driver ahead to an extent where the driver makes an error.  The ‘driver’ in this season has always been Valtteri Bottas.

The Finn has struggled to handle the pressure from his teammate and eventually lost out in the battle. This was quite evident during the race weekends in Portugal and Germany.

The second reason is that Lewis has done a stellar job on tire management. His longer stints have provided himself and Mercedes with a wide array of choices regarding the strategies.

Looking at the weekend in Turkey, history has indicated that Lewis will yet again dominate the grid, but who knows? Considering no F1 cars have raced in the Istanbul circuit for nearly a decade could spice things up and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen could also make a surprise entry into the fight for the race win.

As far as Valtteri is concerned, he would not want to hand over the championship trophy to Lewis Hamilton with over four races to go. Hence, the Finn will definitely not go down without a fight and is likely to give his teammate a hard time.