Lewis Hamilton leaves two F1 rivals worried after Verstappen comments

Lewis Hamilton has claimed Max Verstappen “won’t slip up” in his bid to become a three-time F1 champion in a blow to Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc. Aston Martin and Ferrari were Red Bull’s closest challengers in Bahrain and would be the most likely to capitalise on any mistakes from Verstappen.

Mercedes struggled in Sakhir and dropped behind the two constructors on overall pace. However, Hamilton has appeared to rule out any Red Bull challenge in 2023.

He explained: “I think he will be very, very confident. I think they developed an amazing car last year, they blew away all the records on pretty much everything and I don’t even think they were pushing at the end and still were way ahead.

“I don’t think he’ll slip up. He’s a world champion and so I wouldn’t question his determination or his focus. I think he will be just as focussed as ever, and it’s our job to catch up.”

The Dutchman scored 15 wins last season to cruise to the title while his consistency helped him out in 2021. Verstappen finished in the top two on 18 occasions during his title battle with Hamilton which gave him an edge.

Ferrari went into the new campaign confident they could finally challenge Red Bull after a year of promise in 2022. However, the Scuderia appeared to be unable to match Verstappen and Sergio Perez’s lap times and looked set to settle for P3.

But, Leclerc failed to make it to the end of the race as the Prancing Horse’s reliability issues came back to bite. After the race, he demanded an investigation into the issues in a bid to solve the problem ahead of Saudi Arabia.

He said: “We had a good gap behind, I was managing the pace, everything felt good, so it is a shame. Now I just hope we can look into it, understand what went wrong and don’t have this problem anymore.”

Analysis at Maranello has concluded the problem stemmed from broken wiring due to inadequate fastening and the chassis. The team is also likely to escape without a penalty after they found one of two control units did not need replacing.

Despite the advantage over their nearest rivals, Red Bull boss Christian Horner has refused to get carried away. He commented “We’re not taking anything for granted.

“Let’s see Jeddah in two weeks, Melbourne after that. I think once we’ve got two or three circuits under our belt we’ll get a much better picture of strengths and weaknesses of our car and our opposition.”