Formula 1: A competitive Valtteri Bottas is the sport’s only hope

Through the first seven races of the 2019 Formula 1 season, the only driver who has prevented Lewis Hamilton from going seven for seven is Valtteri Bottas.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Valtteri Bottas is the hero that Formula 1 needs but doesn’t deserve.

Without Bottas, what has been a record-setting seven-race start to the 21-race 2019 season for the Silver Arrows would be a record-setting start for one driver alone, teammate Lewis Hamilton, the five-time world champion who has won both of the last two and four of the last five championships and is on pace to win his sixth while effectively on cruise control.

After Bottas failed to win a single race in the 2018 season, he opened up the 2019 season with a victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix and then another victory in the season’s fourth race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, a race he should have won last season but got away from him as a result of a late flat tire.

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Other than the 29-year-old Finn’s two victories so far this season, what has turned into the Mercedes show has effectively been the Hamilton show.

Hamilton has recorded two second place finishes this season, both in the races that Bottas won. He has not been beaten by any other driver. In every other race, the 34-year-old Briton has been victorious.

Scuderia Ferrari teammates Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel have had their chances to end Hamilton’s stranglehold on Formula 1 in various races, namely the Bahrain Grand Prix for Leclerc and the Canadian Grand Prix for Vettel, but Hamilton prevailed in both races.

After a five-second time penalty stripped Vettel of what would have been his first victory of the season in the Canadian Grand Prix, a Facebook post by Trollmula 1 made its rounds around the internet, and it stated that following:

"“Formula 1 is a simple game. Nineteen men chase another one for two hours and at the end, Hamilton always wins.”"

This sums it up perfectly.

Even after Bottas’s hot start to the season, which reflected great improvement from his first two seasons driving for the Brackley-based team, two seasons during which he combined to win three races, there were questions about whether or not he would be able to sustain his growth over the course of an entire 21-race season like Nico Rosberg did in the 2016 season driving for Mercedes to prevent Hamilton from winning another championship.

In the three races that have taken place since Bottas won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, that question has been answered with a resounding “no”.

After five consecutive 1-2 finishes for Mercedes to start the season, Bottas hasn’t even finished in the top two in either of the most recent two races. Hamilton has opened up a 29-point lead (162 to 133) over his teammate in the driver standings with his sixth career championship already all but locked up.

Sure, Ferrari have had their chances to stop Mercedes and have been quicker than them as a whole on multiple occasions. But here we are, seven races into the season, and Mercedes are not only seven for seven, but their best stretch of tracks is still to come over the next few months.

Ferrari and Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, the only two teams other than Mercedes to win any of the 125 races that have taken place since the 2013 season opener, should still definitely have a few chances to snag a win from Mercedes over the course of the final 14 races of the season, but Mercedes will be the undisputed favorites in a majority of these races, if not all of them.

Inevitably, this means that Hamilton will be the undisputed favorite in a majority of these races. And make no mistake about it; barring some completely unforeseen circumstance, he will win his third consecutive championship and become just the second six-time champion in Formula 1 history by the time the end of the season rolls around in early December.

But it also means that Bottas, while his days of being considered a legitimate championship contender alongside Hamilton were short-lived, will be the only driver who consistently has a chance to prevent the rest of the season from turning into the Hamilton show, a Hamilton show that could very easily produce the all-time single-season driver wins record.

He has proven that he can beat his teammate before this season, and he can do it again, perhaps on several occasions, even if not for the championship.

Could Ferrari teammates Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc as well as Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen give Lewis Hamilton a run for his money on select occasions throughout the remainder of the 2019 Formula 1 season? There is no doubt about it. However, as for preventing Hamilton from winning pretty much every race, Valtteri Bottas it the sport’s only hope to potentially give him problems on a consistent basis.