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A great wingman Lewis? Hamilton says Bottas blocking Vettel won him the race

09:29, 30 Jul 2018

byMatt

Lewis Hamilton has admitted he wouldn't have won the race if Sebastian Vettel came out of the pits in front of Valtteri Bottas. The Finn blocked Vettel for neigh on 30 laps allowing the Brit to generate a big enough gap before Vettel got through.

Vettel had a slow pit stop which cost him a race position to Bottas. Toto Wolff kind of let slip that Bottas was a "great wingman" in the immediate aftermath and now Hamilton describes the same role, without naming it.

"If Vettel had come up for Valtteri after his pit stop, it would have been a lot harder," the British driver explains in the press conference after the race. "Then he would have gone along with me with another five laps to go and taken the profit. Whether I could have defended my place? I doubt it, it would have been extremely difficult."

However, his championship rival Sebastian Vettel admitted that he wouldn't have been able to do the job on Hamilton. We knew overtaking would be tricky in Hungary, but not that tricky!

"We might have been able to get close to him, but overtaking would have been impossible. You already saw that I was much faster than Valtteri, but catching up took a long time. That would have been the case with Lewis as well," added Vettel.