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maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 26 JUNE 2019 20 FORMULA 1 SPORTS "I know people might not want to hear it," Lewis Ham- ilton said after utterly domi- nating the French Grand Prix, to take his sixth victory in eight races this season, "but it is going to get stronger from here". To some, that might sound a little boastful, but the thing is that there is no reason not to believe him. The pattern of the last cou- ple of years in Formula 1 has been exactly what Hamilton was talking about after prob- ably his most comfortable win of the season. He has tended to start the year well enough, but not necessarily noticeably strong- er than his team-mate, or his other closest rivals, only to find another gear from about halfway through the season and move off into the strato- sphere. The worry in 2019 for Ham- ilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas, Ferrari, and anyone interested in a competitive season is that, this year, that take-off appears to have hap- pened early. If that impres- sion is correct, the season is effectively over already. Hamilton heads for the next race in Austria this coming weekend with a 36-point lead over Bottas. That means Bot- tas would have to win a race and take at least fourth place at another without Hamilton scoring at all to catch him. Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, in third place and a massive 76 points adrift, is so far away he is almost in a different cham- pionship. Hamilton and Bottas started the season evenly matched. And after the Finn won the opening race of the season while Hamilton toiled a little behind him, there was much talk of a 'Bottas 2.0', a new man emerging, reinvigorated, after his travails in the second half of last year. That always looked a little hopeful and premature, but Bottas did in- deed have a strong start to the year. He and Hamilton shared two wins apiece in the first four races, after which Bottas actually led the championship by a point. Since then, though, things have unravelled for him. A second place in Spain behind Hamilton, after taking pole, when Hamilton beat him off the line, was followed by an unlucky third in Monaco, which would have been sec- ond had he not suffered a puncture when Max Verstap- pen drove him into the pit wall at a stop. In both, the margins be- tween him and Hamilton were small. But that has not been the case in the last two races in Canada and France. Bottas very much had an off weekend in Canada. And in France, after looking strong in practice, he fell away in qualifying and was destroyed in the race. After pacing himself in the early laps, Hamilton extend- ed his lead by five seconds in nine laps before the pit stops, and continued to turn the screw afterwards, eventually crossing the line 18 seconds clear. Bottas says he feels the same in the car now as he has done all season. And the suspicion is that it is not that he has dropped off in the last two races, but that Hamilton has upped his game. "I can't believe it has been as good a season already to start with as it has," Hamilton said. "Particularly as I felt I really struggled in the first few races trying to get on top of the car. "The races have been strong but in qualifying and practice I have been really struggling to put my finger on where the performance was and how to extract it. But I'm getting there." This latest victory was the 79th of his career. He is now just 12 short of Michael Schu- macher's all-time record. Not that he needs that for motiva- tion - that's already in him. For that, one only has to look at Hamilton's pursuit of fastest lap in the final part of the race, even though he knew Vettel had pitted for fresh soft tyres to go for it himself. De- spite the massive tyre-grip disparity, Hamilton missed it by just 0.024secs. "It is just always wanting to elevate," he said. "After every race there is something we could have done better. "Like today, they were: 'Don't bother with the fast- est lap, you can't get the fast- est lap.' 'What do you mean? We have nothing to lose, I'm going for it.' And I went for it and nearly got it "It is switching the mental- ity to always be fighting, al- ways be hungry and always be pushing. There is never a moment you shouldn't be pushing and the moment you sit back is the moment you lose. And I don't plan on do- ing that." Hamilton 'going to get stronger' after French Grand Prix win Hamilton recorded his 79th F1 career win at the French Grand Prix

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