Formula 1: Lewis Hamilton putting 2019 championship away early

Lewis Hamilton has effectively been putting the 2019 Formula 1 driver championship away early as he begins to pull away from Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas.

The battle between Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport teammates Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas has been a battle of which teammate can get to turn one in the lead in five of the six races that have been contested so far in the 21-race 2019 Formula 1 season.

These two drivers have locked out the front row in these five races, and whoever has gotten to turn one first has won the race. Three times it has been the polesitter and three times it has been Hamilton, although the polesitter has only won two of these five races.

Hamilton won the other race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, after Scuderia Ferrari teammates Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel locked out the front row before both enduring separate issues throughout the race.

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Hamilton, the five-time champion who has won both of the last two and four of the five championships that have been contested since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era in the 2014 season, naturally entered the 2019 season as the championship favorite.

But after finishing in third place in the driver standings in the 2017 season with three victories and fifth in the 2018 season with none, Bottas started out the 2019 season very strong, looking as though he had everything it takes to knock off the 34-year-old Briton.

Bottas won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix after recording the race’s fastest lap time, and he won it by 20.886 seconds over Hamilton in second place, the largest margin of victory since Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg won the 2016 Russian Grand Prix by 25.022 seconds over Hamilton in second.

After Hamilton won the Bahrain Grand Prix and the season’s third race, the Chinese Grand Prix, over Bottas in second place to take the lead of the driver standings for the first time in the 2019 season, Bottas responded by winning the season’s fourth race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, over Hamilton in second to retake a one-point lead (87 to 86) over Hamilton.

Hamilton has since won the season’s fifth and six races, the Spanish Grand Prix and the Monaco Grand Prix, respectively over Bottas in second and third place to build up a 17-point lead (137 to 120) in the driver standings over Bottas heading into the season’s seventh race, the Canadian Grand Prix.

At this point, Hamilton is close to putting the championship fight away even with well over half of the season remaining.

Earlier in the season, Bottas looked like he had what it took to at least challenge Hamilton for the championship, especially given the struggles of Ferrari that have effectively turned this year’s championship battle into a two-driver battle among the Silver Arrows teammates.

But matching Hamilton with one victory for each of his two victories isn’t good enough to win a championship, nor is allowing him to win four races in a five-race span.

Only a heroic nine-win effort, which included a four-race winning streak to start the season and a three-race winning streak in the second half of the season, by Rosberg was enough to barely stave off Hamilton for the 2016 championship, the only championship of the V6 turbo hybrid era that Hamilton has failed to win.

As much as it looked like he was capable of pulling this off, Bottas simply doesn’t have what it takes to keep the pressure on Hamilton for a full 21-race season, much less beat him like Rosberg did, and while he has certainly improved over his first two-plus seasons driving for the Brackley-based team, there has been nothing in the form of sustained growth to suggest otherwise.

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With Lewis Hamilton starting to pull away from teammate Valtteri Bottas in the driver standings, has he effectively already put the 2019 Formula 1 driver championship away through the season’s first six races? Don’t bet against the five-time champion.

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