Bottas willing to ‘take one for the team’ to support Hamilton’s F1 title bid

Hamilton currently trails main championship rival Max Verstappen by five points after the pair crashed out of the Italian Grand Prix while battling for position.

Sochi is a venue Bottas has enjoyed success at and was also the scene of controversy when he was asked by Mercedes to give up victory in order to boost Hamilton’s title bid at the 2018 Russian Grand Prix.

Bottas, who is 80.5 points behind Hamilton in the championship standings, admitted that winning the title is probably out of reach this year.

“I think in Formula 1 you just never know how the season will progress and there’s still a fair amount of races to go, so, never says never,” Bottas said.

“The only thing I will keep doing, anyways, is to try my best, try to win races and try to be as consistent as I can, and bring the points.   

“If I’m allowed? I don’t know, really, you’ve got to ask Toto [Wolff], but, for sure, it’s still a reasonable gap, in the points. At least, earlier on in the season I felt I wasn’t really anymore allowed to be in contention.

“But you never know, we go race by race. but, for me personally, coming here to this race, the only thing in my mind is winning, so that’s all that matters to me.”

Asked specifically if he would accept team orders and let Hamilton through, Bottas replied: “We have discussed many things internally, including different scenarios because every race is always different.

“There could be times where we need to play as a team and I’ll need to take one for the team.

“The way the situation is, yes - I would do it. We’re here as a team and we need to make sure we win both titles, not only the constructors’ but also the drivers’.  

“Lewis has a greater chance for that – so that’s the situation, now, at the moment.”

Bottas insisted he has moved on from Russia 2018 after initially finding it “hard to accept” at the time.

“That’s a few years ago, but at least now I can be fine with things,” Bottas said.

“At that point, yes, it was painful. And for me, it was hard to accept. But we’ve obviously moved on since, and also I’ve grown a lot since. Things are a bit different now.”

Bottas followed Mercedes’ last team order at the British Grand Prix when he was instructed not to fight Hamilton during his teammate’s recovery drive to win at Silverstone.