Mercedes could have one seat open after the 2019 Formula 1 season reaches its conclusion. Who will drive the team’s second car in the 2020 season?
First of all, last July, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton signed a two-year contact extension to continue driving for the Brackley-based team through at least the 2020 Formula 1 season.
As such, the 34-year-old Briton is not one of the four drivers included in this article as possible candidates to drive for the team in the 2021 season. Assuming everything goes as planned, he will be one of their drivers, just like he has been in each of the last seven seasons going back to the 2013 season.
But as far as who the teammate to the five-time champion will be next year, that is anything but certain.
Will the Silver Arrows make a change to their driver lineup from the 2019 season to the 2020 season? If so, will they promote one of the drivers who is already in their organization, or will they hire a completely different driver to drive alongside Hamilton?
When the dust settles from a silly season that has started far earlier than it usually does, who will be Hamilton’s teammate in the 2020 season? Here are the four primary candidates who could take on that role next year.
Valtteri Bottas
The most obvious candidate to drive for Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate in the 2020 season is Valtteri Bottas, who has driven for the team as the teammate to the 34-year-old Briton in each of the last three seasons.
Bottas signed with Mercedes ahead of the 2017 season following the unexpected retirement of 2016 Formula 1 champion and former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, and he has signed two additional one-year contract extensions to continue driving for the team through the 2019 season.
In addition, the one-year contract extension that Bottas signed last July to continue driving for Mercedes through the 2019 season contains an additional one-year option that could allow him to continue driving for the team through the 2020 season, although it is not known whether this one-year option favors Bottas or the team when it comes to accepting or rejecting it. That said, it is widely speculated that it favors the team.
While Bottas has produced the worst statistics of the three drivers who have driven for the Brackley-based team since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era in the 2014 season both in terms of his race results and his finishes in the driver standings, he still clearly has what it takes to win races, and he certainly has what it takes to simply play the role of a great teammate to Hamilton, as he showed on multiple occasions in the 2018 season alone.
In fact, through the 2019 season’s first two races, Bottas even leads the driver standings over Hamilton with one victory and one second place finish, as he has done what he needed to do to assert himself as the team’s second true championship contender early on in the year.
As long as Mercedes continue to remain Formula 1’s top team and win constructor championships and one of their two drivers continue to win driver championships, preferably with both of their drivers in championship contention, they have no reason to consider moving on from the 29-year-old Finn.
Esteban Ocon
Esteban Ocon drove for Sahara Force India-turned-Racing Point Force India in the 2017 and 2018 seasons as a Mercedes junior driver, but he lost his ride with the team for the 2019 season due to the fact that the team were purchased by a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll, who replaced Ocon with his son Lance.
Ocon ended up failing to land a ride with the other non-factory Mercedes team on the grid, ROKiT Williams Racing, although that was probably a blessing in disguise for him considering how drastically slow the Grove-based team have been so far this season.
Instead, the 22-year-old Frenchman became the Mercedes reserve driver, and there were rumors when this was announced late last year that this put him in line to replace Valtteri Bottas ahead of the 2020 season assuming Mercedes did not utilize the additional one-year option on the one-year contract that Bottas signed last July to continue driving for the team through at least the 2019 season.
These rumors even heated up to the point where many people believed that there was a chance that Ocon would replace Bottas at the Silver Arrows before the 2019 season ends if the 29-year-old Finn does not perform at a high enough level and he hinders Mercedes’ chances of continuing their five-year runs of winning driver and constructor championships.
If Bottas does not return to Mercedes for what would be his fourth season driving for the team next year, don’t be surprised to see Ocon become Lewis Hamilton’s teammate.
George Russell
George Russell is currently in his first season competing in Formula 1, and he is driving for Williams, which have been and will likely continue to be by far the slowest team on the grid. Due to their overall lack of pace, they literally only have a chance to beat the drivers of other teams when these other drivers are forced to retire.
Simply put, you can already forget about the possibility of seeing Russell or his teammate, Robert Kubica, score any points this season with any top 10 finishes.
That said, the 2017 GP3 Series champion and 2018 Formula 2 champion is a Mercedes junior driver who Mercedes want driving for Williams this season, so they certainly have no reason to use the team’s lack of performance against him, especially considering the fact that it is not his fault and the fact that he has beaten Kubica quite comfortably in both of the 2019 season’s first two races.
After the 2017 season ended, Lewis Hamilton himself stated that he could see himself “handing the baton” to Russell ahead of the 2021 season if Hamilton ends up leaving Mercedes at that time.
The question is whether or not the five-time champion will even have the need to do that, because the 21-year-old Briton could very well replace Bottas as Hamilton’s teammate ahead of the 2020 season if he keeps getting the most out of his snail-paced car like he has down through the first two races of the season to prove that he deserves the opportunity to drive for the top-tier factory Mercedes team.
Max Verstappen
In terms of the most intriguing candidate to drive for Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate in the 2020 season, Max Verstappen tops that list by far. The fact that he is even somehow in this discussion is intriguing enough.
The 21-year-old Dutchman has driven for Red Bull Racing since the fifth race of the 21-race 2016 season, and he signed a contract in October of 2017 to continue driving for the team through the 2020 season.
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However, Red Bull Racing manager Helmut Marko recently revealed that Verstappen’s contract has a performance clause in it, meaning that if the Milton Keynes-based team do not provide him with a car capable of winning this year’s championship, he is free to pursue other options.
On Verstappen’s part, there may not be much pursuing, as Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff has already reportedly tried to lure the rising star to the Silver Arrows by contacting both him and his father, former Formula 1 driver Jos Verstappen, on several occasions over the last few months. Jos denied that Wolff has reached out to Max, but he admitted that Wolff has called him from time to time and hinted that what Marko stated about the performance clause is true.
Verstappen is considered by many fans to be a future Formula 1 champion, and the fact that he had earned the first five victories of his career at the age of 21 years and 28 days old, an age at which no other driver in the history of the sport has even earned one victory, supports that idea.
Additionally, unlike Ocon and Russell, Verstappen has already been a proven contender for race wins for several seasons driving for one of Formula 1’s three top-tier teams, so making the switch to Mercedes wouldn’t be a huge change for him like it would be for either one of those two young Mercedes-affiliated drivers.
If Verstappen ends up becoming available following the conclusion of the 2019 season, Mercedes would have no reason not to pursue him, and Verstappen would have no reason not to sign with the team if given the opportunity to do so.
Who will end up being Lewis Hamilton’s teammate at Mercedes in the 2020 Formula 1 season? Will it be one of these four top candidates? If so, will it be Valtteri Bottas, Esteban Ocon, George Russell or Max Verstappen? The 2019 season is still young, so don’t expect to know the answers to these questions for another several months.