Lewis Hamilton wants Alex Albon to step up as Mercedes ace eyes Max Verstappen title scrap | F1 | Sport
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Bottas finished second, with Red Bull‘s Max Verstappen a distant third as Hamilton extended his lead at the top of the drivers’ standings to 47 points.
Verstappen’s team-mate Albon was down in sixth – a place worse off than he had qualified – as Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon came home in fourth and fifth respectively.
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Hamilton pinpointed the fact Albon is down the order as a big issue for Red Bull and their hopes of making Verstappen the youngest champion in F1 history.
And, alongside calling out tyre manufacturers Pirelli, he urged Albon to step up his game to bring the title fight to life.
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“With the Red Bulls, people downplay it, but they’ve got a very, very strong car and Max is doing a great job with it,” said Hamilton. “Unfortunately, both drivers aren’t there like me and Valtteri are there. That makes it harder for them.
“I’ve experienced it many years ago, when I was at McLaren. I was the driver that was always there at the front that didn’t have a team-mate backing up, so equally you don’t get the constructors’ points.
“But then you can’t play strategy on the cars you’re racing against. So they’ve got that. So he’s kind of there on his own.
“Today it’s really tyres, everyone’s doing a one-stop [strategy]. This one-stop thing really is boring.
“At the end of the day, we’re all just managing [tyres] out there, which is not racing. At the end, everyone’s backing off so that the tyres don’t deflate, blow up, whatever.
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“We have no idea what they’re going to do. I was worried they might do the same thing as Silvertone, so I backed off. Maybe it would have been fine. But it was too big a risk to take because I had the lead.
“Of course, I really, really would like to have more of a fight. But that’s not on me. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing.”
Hamilton and Verstappen fill the top two places in the drivers’ standings, with Bottas 50 points adrift of his team-mate in third.
Mercedes enjoy a 106-point lead over Red Bull in the constructors’ table after winning six of the first six races of 2020.
Next up for Hamilton and co. is next Sunday’s trip to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix.
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