Formula 1

LCH WINS IS IT REALLY AS CLOSE AS IT LOOKS?

While the second half of the race was fairly dull, it was the third time in three races we’ve seen Hamilton and Verstappen go wheel to wheel on track and the third time it’s passed by without incident.

At the Bahrain Grand Prix they battled for the win. There was contact at the first corner at Imola but nothing malicious — Verstappen snatched the lead from Hamilton with an aggressive, but fair, move which forced the world champion across the kerbs. Exactly the kind of move you need to pull on a driver of Hamilton’s ability.

We got to see two overtakes — one from either driver on the other — at Portimao. Verstappen caught Hamilton napping at the Safety Car restart and passed into Turn 1.

Explaining what happened, LCH said: “I was focusing naturally on Valtteri and literally just for a split-second I looked in my mirror just to see where Max was, and in that split-second, that’s when Valtteri went, so I lost out to Valtteri. So that wasn’t great.”

LCH laughed and added: “Then I was in Valtteri’s tow and he was about to pull out, so I pulled out, and gave Max Valtteri’s tow, and I was like ‘you idiot’ to myself!

LCH wasn’t annoyed at himself for too long, capitalising on a Verstappen mistake on the sequence of corners leading to the long straight and reclaiming the position around the outside a few laps later.

Verstappen said the mistake came from trying to put pressure on Bottas out in front.

“I tried to attack Valtteri but all the time I could not get close enough in those last two corners and the run into the straight,” Verstappen said. “By pushing, I had a little wobble, but I didn’t really lose out a lot from that but Lewis was already super close behind and he got me into Turn 1”.

While LCH joined a few other drivers in voicing concerns about Verstappen’s aggressive style a few years ago, it’s clear there is mutual respect developing between them in the heat of this championship fight. Both drivers took the opportunity to compliment the other’s race craft in the post-race press conference.

Asked about what it was like to battle LCH so often, Verstappen said: “Yeah, it’s been really cool. Especially when you race a driver, when you know you can go to the absolute limit and you can trust each other to race super hard, I think that’s always really nice.

“You can see in the three races we’ve had we haven’t really… well, it’s been really close to each other, but predictable. With Lewis I’ve never had something like ‘oh, we’re gonna crash’ or something, I always have full trust in Lewis that we always give each other enough space.”