![]() Mercedes brought Bottas in first but then left the championship leader out one lap too long – which Wolff took the blame for, saying it was due to him distracting Vowles with strategy debate at the moment the call should’ve been made – and got Hamilton stuck in a wheel-to-wheel battle with Vettel that was going to have tyre life repercussions. ![]() Max Verstappen’s Red Bull coming through from the back of the grid and likely to be running long complicated the leaders’ tactics and put extra pressure on pitstop timings – though in the end Verstappen’s pace was so good that they all emerged behind him for a spell anyway. It prompted mild, politely expressed frustration from Bottas and led to Wolff having to justify the decision and defend Mercedes against suggestions it was favouring Hamilton to too great an extent even considering the championship situation.īottas (110 points behind Hamilton) beat his team-mate to Sochi pole and they led away with Vettel on their tail. That’s underlined by the circumstances in which those messages were deployed in 2018.Ĭoming into that year’s chaotic, wet-dry Hockenheim race, Hamilton was eight points behind championship rival Sebastian Vettel having only won once in the preceding five grands prix, and was starting only 14th after a hydraulic problem in qualifying.īut Hamilton came through the field, Vettel crashed out of the lead in changeable weather and suddenly Mercedes was running 1-2 at a safety car restart with 10 laps to go.īottas – 59 points behind Hamilton at this stage and not a realistic title contender – pushed hard to take the lead at the restart, Hamilton responded firmly, and Vowles reached for the radio button… So if Vowles came on the radio, it was a clear sign the driver needed to take it seriously. He was basically the last resort before team boss Toto Wolff had to wade in. ![]() It has happened several times since and, while easily mocked and quite funny, the running joke does a disservice to the responsibility Vowles had. More famously, five races later, he started a message telling Bottas to move aside for Hamilton in Russia with the same words. The first notable “Valtteri, it’s James” interjection came when Vowles apologetically instructed Bottas to stop attacking team-mate Lewis Hamilton late in the 2018 German Grand Prix. Vowles was usually deployed to intervene if a driver was either challenging their strategy or their race engineer, but sometimes had the unpleasant task of enforcing team orders on Valtteri Bottas, too. His radio interjections were deliberately rare as they were saved for moments when things needed to be escalated up the Mercedes chain of command. Vowles’ voice is familiar to all F1 fans as the one that appeared in the ears of Mercedes drivers during races, and particularly for “Valtteri, it’s James” messages that sparked one of F1’s best-known memes back in 2018. Mercedes happily played up to the internet meme around its outgoing strategy chief when last month it announced James Vowles’ departure to become Williams team principal – a role he officially takes up today. “Williams, it’s James!” read the headline at the top of the Mercedes Formula 1 team’s website.
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