Nico Rosberg has shown huge task Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen face vs Lewis Hamilton

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The 2021 Formula One season is little over a month away as reigning champion Lewis Hamilton enters his 15th year in the sport and his ninth with Mercedes, looking to overtake Michael Schumacher as the outright most successful F1 driver of all time.

The seven-time world champion has won four Drivers’ Championships on the spin and six of the last seven, only being denied by Nico Rosberg in 2016, the German retiring just as soon as he won the title for the first time.

Since Rosberg called it a day, Hamilton has dominated F1, winning 42 of 79 races and finishing second or third in a further 19 events. He’s five race wins shy of 100 and two shy of a century of pole positions too.

In the four seasons that Valtteri Bottas has been his Mercedes team-mate, Hamilton has scored exactly 430 more championship points than the Finn. That’s more than the Briton has ever managed in a single season, with 413 in 2019 his best ever points haul.

Bottas has managed nine race wins in four years with Mercedes while Rosberg won that same amount in his title-winning 2016 season.

There are multiple reasons for that – including the fact Bottas has suffered a massive amount of misfortune and Hamilton has only improved with age like a fine wine.

Speaking this week to German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, Rosberg declared of his success: “I knew how good he [Hamilton] was.

“For the outside world it is now a confirmation that he is the best of all time, even by titles. That I beat him in the same car gives me extra confirmation of my success.”

He’s not wrong, to be fair. Rosberg is the only man in the hybrid engine era to get the better of Hamilton – although Max Verstappen might fancy his chances in a Mercedes with the same speed and power as Hamilton.

Rosberg’s feat is a monumental achievement and while Bottas has shown he can rival Hamilton for pace in qualifying and in some races, he hasn’t been able to sustain it across a full calendar year, partly sometimes due to his lack of luck.

It’s also partly because Hamilton is, if not the single greatest F1 driver of all time, in the clutch of all-time greats alongside the likes of Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio.

F1: How Hamilton compares to Schumacher

Rosberg has spoken many time about the exhaustive processes he undertook to get the better of Hamilton given his rival’s incredible talents – and his comments ultimately explain the reason he retired from F1 just five days after clinching the title.

“Two hours, every second day of mental training,” he said, of what he did in 2016 to get the better of Hamilton. “It was a huge process and just gave me so much and that’s one of the big reasons why I ended up being world champion.

“I just dedicated my whole every single breathing second of my life to winning that next race and becoming world champion.

“Lewis drove me to go searching for ways to be better than I ever thought I could be because he’s the best of all time, or going towards the best of all time.

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“So of course to beat him you need to rise above everything you have. It’s the only way to win.”

It seems Rosberg – a well-known family man – simply burned himself out to beat Hamilton.

And his comments show just how tricky it will be for either Bottas on the other side of the Mercedes garage or Verstappen in the Red Bull to prevent the seven-time champion from clinching his eighth crown and overtaking Schumacher in 2021.

Former British driver Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, said in March of last year: “The only way to beat him [Hamilton] is to do what Nico did and make him feel uncomfortable. Lewis doesn’t do cunning, wiliness; that doesn’t seem to be his bag.

“If he is up against someone prepared to unsettle him he might be a little bit vulnerable.”

While another ex-racer, Martin Brundle, who works alongside Hill for Sky Sports F1, said in December: “I’m impressed with the way Nico went about it. He got a bit crafty and cheeky, and he did push him.

“He got up to a few tricks and he tried his best to destabilise and beat Lewis. I think Nico did a sterling job, I think his mentality and approach was a good approach to beat Lewis.

“Nico was quick enough, resilient enough, and wasn’t subservient at all. I think he challenged Lewis in some ways that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.”

Bottas has already ruled himself out of copying Rosberg though, and said: “Along the way, there’s been many people suggest I change to be a Nico Rosberg. But I’m not a Nico Rosberg. I much prefer to do the talking on track and race fair.

“I have also been able to get to know Lewis, and I know that there’s no benefit of trying to play with his mind.

“I’m sure it would be annoying for him, but it would be wasting my energy. And I think he will be getting even more p***ed off and drive faster.”

Verstappen, you sense, might be more open to crossing Hamilton and he’s already fired jibes to his rival, saying last year: “To be honest, 90 percent of the field could win in that car. Nothing against Lewis, he’s a great driver, but the car is so dominant.

“OK, maybe others wouldn’t be as dominant as Lewis is, but you accept the situation you are in and you just try to make the best of it.”

Clearly, the task at hand to topple Hamilton is gigantic. Bottas has yet to manage it and neither has Verstappen, albeit in inferior machinery. Sebastian Vettel, when Ferrari were Mercedes’ big title rivals, couldn’t manage it either despite having four world titles back at home.

That it took so much for Rosberg to edge out Hamilton, beating him to the championship by a mere five points thanks to finishing second at the last race in Abu Dhabi, doesn’t just underline the size of the task but emboldens and puts it in full caps, too.

Speaking ahead of the new season, Rosberg predicted: “The only one who can get a little closer is Max Verstappen. Maybe his new team-mate Sergio Perez too, if the Red Bull car is going well. Otherwise his Mercedes colleague Valtteri Bottas. But with him, the chances dwindle with every year he doesn’t make it.”

This might the make-or-break year for Bottas, who is out of contract at the end of the season amid suggestions George Russell could be promoted to the Silver Arrows’ line-up. It’s different for Verstappen of course, with the 23-year-old still widely regarded as a driver who will win multiple championships in the future.

For Hamilton it’s business as usual and unless Bottas or Verstappen can take a few lessons from Rosberg or the Briton suffers an unprecedented number of DNFs, it’s hard not to see him turning a magnificent seven into a great eight.

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