A predicted understudy role would take the pressure off the Finn but with the F1 drivers’ market opening up at the end of 2017, he is likely to come out fighting

With 10 years in Formula One and three world championships under his belt there is little that will unnerve Lewis Hamilton, even entering a season which brings the biggest rule shakeup for two decades. But while taking the wheel of a new car is a challenge the British driver will relish, adapting to his new Mercedes team-mate, Valtteri Bottas, may be more of a concern.

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Hamilton is more rounded, more mature and stronger mentally than the 22-year-old who stormed the grid in 2007 and took his first title a year later. He is also, despite tedious protestations about his lifestyle, still completely committed. He attracted unnecessary ire for doing what any driver should have done in attempting to back Nico Rosberg into the pack at Abu Dhabi last season. Yet that and his wins in the final four races were a signal his desire for the championship is as strong as ever.

Rosberg did all that was needed to take the title but over four years together at Mercedes Hamilton increasingly held the upper hand and a friendly relationship became tense, fragile and – on occasion – almost hostile. The German’s decision to retire was a suggestion he knew he was unlikely to come out on top again.

The garage dynamic begins afresh as Hamilton and Bottas find their places as team-mates and rivals. Here Hamilton has all the advantages before the season begins. He has enjoyed a longer time in F1, with Mercedes and in winning titles. Bottas has yet to win a grand prix.

The drivers will be treated equally but, as Hugh Richards, a chartered sports psychologist and lecturer at the Institute for Sport, PE & Health Sciences at Edinburgh University, believes, Hamilton will begin as the top dog. “Lewis’s status, based on experience and achievement, is higher than his new team-mate. He is in the ascendancy.”

Tellingly, Richards, who has worked with the FIA Institute young driver academy, the Pirelli star driver programme and the UK Motor Sport Association race and rally elite programmes, adds a note of caution. “To begin with he can be relatively relaxed but he will be wondering: ‘What is this guy going to produce?’ If Bottas arrives and does as Lewis did in his first season, the world will suddenly feel quite different.”

Hamilton made his mark by overshadowing and entirely unsettling Fernando Alonso at McLaren. Bottas, in turn, is not likely to be fazed by the exalted company with whom he now finds himself. The Finn took to the sport after chancing on a karting track with his father when he was six years old. The F1 world championship was his target and 21 years later it remains his goal. “I never give up,” he said on Tuesday. “I still cherish my ambition of winning the world title – I will do everything I can to achieve that.”

His four years at Williams, three of them alongside the vastly more experienced Felipe Massa, proved he would not be dominated by a team-mate. There is no indication he will automatically allow Hamilton to do so. For fans who want to see a fight, this may be just the frisson the season needs and while he may be behind Hamilton in experience, it could prove an advantage.

“He has nothing to lose and everything to gain which is a fantastic position to be in,” Richards says. “Because everything is a challenge and very little is a threat. Challenge is very productive and produces much better performances, threat makes things frayed and fragile and performances are more erratic.”

Bottas’s contract has not been revealed but it is believed to be for one year with the potential for extension. The Mercedes head of motorsport, Toto Wolff, has made it clear the team are keeping all their options open with the drivers’ market freeing up at the end of 2017. Bottas will know he may only have the one shot and has every reason to come out fighting.

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Should he turn that tussle into a championship battle, psychologically it may yet turn Hamilton’s advantage against him. Richards says: “If you are in the ascendancy and you consider yourself the No1 driver, you are up there already and if you see that position being threatened it puts on a lot of pressure. It puts on all the wrong kinds of competitive stress.

“Bottas taking the lead is a recipe for fireworks. A performer under threat will be up to everything to regain his position. He will have everything to lose and there will be very little or no motivation to be team-orientated, it will become totally dog eat dog under those circumstances.”

Niki Lauda said on Tuesday that he believes Bottas can win the world championship. The Finn clearly believes he can win, too. His skill as a driver has yet to be proven anywhere near as definitively as Hamilton’s but let us hope he can do so by at least putting himself forward as one of the contenders for the 2017 crown.

Canopies back on the agenda

Despite extensively testing the Halo protection device last season and a clear commitment to adopting some form of safety measures around the cockpit for 2018, the route the FIA will take still seems unclear. Halo was the preferred measure last season, run in Friday practice sessions at some point by all of the teams, rather than the aeroscreen proposal from Red Bull whose design failed to pass the FIA’s testing procedure. Its adoption, despite opposition from some fans but with widespread driver support, had appeared to be likely.

Yet this week, F1’s deputy race director Laurent Mekies noted that a full canopy system had still not been ruled out. The FIA has impact tested full canopies and it was thrust to the top of the agenda again after Dan Wheldon died as a result of injuries suffered in a 2011 IndyCar race, but more recently they appeared to have been dropped in favour of Halo.

Of the canopy idea, Mekies said: “Technically, it’s possible, it’s maybe six months, five months away if we wanted to do that.”

The decision it seems is still on the table and it still comes down to whether a closed cockpit is just “wrong” for F1. “We are waiting for the final word from our bosses to know if they want the halo, if they want the canopy, if they want something in between, or if they want something more aesthetically pleasing,” added Mekies. “It’s a philosophical conversation. The engineering work is done. Somebody needs to decide if it’s right for F1 or not; if it’s compatible with the DNA.”