The Mercedes team orders in the Japanese GP caught the imagination of the entire F1 fraternity, with a lot of F1 fans calling Mercedes out for imposing team orders despite Hamilton having a comfortable 40 point advantage in the driver’s standings.
Bottas had secured pole position in qualifying in Saturday and was gearing up for his first win of the 2018 season. The Finn was confident that Mercedes would allow him to race and go for the win.
However, midway through the race, after the minor scare where Hamilton had come out behind Vettel(although he overtook him soon after), Mercedes decided to swap their drivers, as Hamilton was coming under slight pressure from and was also experiencing some blistering on his rear tyres.
Bottas was obviously a little flustered with the decision initially, but ultimately accepted it as Hamilton was vying for the driver’s title.
Hamilton and Bottas shared a lovely moment after the race, with the duo embracing each other and Hamilton also offering his race trophy to Bottas.
The incident was the massive talking point from the weekend, but Mercedes accepted that they did not want to leave anything to chance and hence had to come up with team orders.
Now, while not much has been spoken about the incident since that day, the Mercedes Twitter account has brought it up again, by posting a picture of Bottas looking at his phone and seeing a ‘meme’ of himself regarding being Lewis’ wingman.
The meme is about things that gives Bottas headaches, with letting Hamilton pass being the biggest headache for the Finn.
Fans did call out Mercedes for being a little insensitive about the issue, but the Mercedes account confirmed that Bottas was actually looking at that image in his phone and that the Mercedes social media team hadn’t photoshopped it.
They also confirmed that Bottas had been a great sport about the entire incident and knew how to take a joke on himself.
