Formula 1: Is Valtteri Bottas a legitimate 2019 championship contender?

With his dominant victory in the 2019 Formula 1 season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, has Valtteri Bottas established himself as a legitimate championship contender?

Throughout the entire offseason between the 2018 and 2019 Formula 1 seasons, the discussion about Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Valtteri Bottas revolved around what he needed to do in the 2019 season to prevent the Brackley-based team from replacing him with Esteban Ocon in the 2020 season if not before the 2019 season ends.

This talk stemmed from the fact that Bottas failed to win a single race in the 2018 season, meaning that the three victories he earned in the 2017 season, which was his first season driving for Mercedes, were the only three victories that he had earned throughout his first two seasons driving for the team and in his Formula 1 career.

Meanwhile, since the V6 turbo hybrid era began in the 2014 season, no other Mercedes driver has earned fewer than five victories in a season.

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In addition, Bottas finished in third place in the 2017 driver standings and fifth in the 2018 standings. Meanwhile, the lowest finish in the standings for any other Mercedes driver since the V6 turbo hybrid era began is second.

In summation, it was abundantly clear that the 2019 season is set to make or break Bottas’s career in Formula 1, especially when it comes to his tenure driving for Mercedes, and it was clear that he needed to start the season off on a high note to prevent the team from being forced to utilize team orders to prioritize Lewis Hamilton, his teammate, which would effectively indicate that the end of his time driving for the team is near.

Bottas responded by silencing his critics via the best and most dominant performance of his Formula 1 career.

After qualifying in second place for the 2019 season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, behind Hamilton, Bottas took the lead at the start of the race and only ever gave it up during his pit stop, at which point Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen led two laps as a result of the fact that he came into the pits two laps later than the 29-year-old Finn did.

Bottas went on to win the race by 20.886 seconds over Hamilton in second place, and he did so after leading 56 of its 58 laps and after never being passed for the lead on the track. In addition, not since Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg won the 2016 Russian Grand Prix by 25.022 seconds over Hamilton in second place had a driver won a race by this large of a margin.

Perhaps even more impressively, Bottas’s 20.886-second margin of victory became the largest margin of victory for a non-polesitter since Hamilton started the 2014 British Grand Prix in sixth place and went on to win it by 30.135 seconds over Bottas in second.

To be the best, you have to beat the best. Bottas opened the 2019 season doing no less than exactly that, as he executed a perfect smackdown of his teammate, the five-time champion who has won four of the last five driver championships and both of the driver championships that have been decided since Bottas began driving for the Silver Arrows.

With just one race down and 20 remaining on the 2019 schedule, there is still a lot that has not yet been determined about the year. But one thing is certain: Bottas is not messing around, and he is not here to play a support role for Hamilton. He is here to win the championship, and he proved right off the bat that he is a legitimate contender to do so.

How many more races will Valtteri Bottas win throughout the course of the 2019 Formula 1 season? Will he win this year’s driver championship to become the first first-time champion since Nico Rosberg won it in the 2016 season? The season is still very young, as just one race is in the books and 20 remain on the schedule, but he has most definitely established himself as a legitimate title contender already.