Hungarian GP: Lewis Hamilton keeping Valtteri Bottas promise in 2017 was pure class

The 2017 Hungarian GP saw Lewis Hamilton display incredible sportsmanship with his teammate, Valtteri Bottas with the Briton keeping his promise to his fellow Silver Arrows driver.

Formula One is a complex sport when it comes to the team vs individual battle as they can often get in the way of one another, especially when one driver is gunning for the Driver’s Championship and the other isn’t.

Back in 2017, we saw Mercedes vs Ferrari with the driver battle the classic Hamilton vs Sebastian Vettel.

It was Hamilton running behind his teammate during the race however, sitting P4 with Bottas P3 with both Ferrari cars up the road, their title rivals in both championships.

Hamilton jumped on the team radio to ask if they could invert the cars to give him a clear run at the Ferraris without having to overtake his teammate given his superior pace at the time on track.

Team orders were deployed and Hamilton was allowed through, he did say whilst asking he would revert the cars back before the end of the race if he wasn’t able to catch Kimi Raikkonen or Vettel.

He was a man of his word, allowing Bottas through to claim the podium and finish third behind the Ferrari duo whilst he had to settle for P4. The Finn was a team player and allowed Hamilton through on request, but got what he deserved from the race as Hamilton was unable to pass him on pace alone.

It was a damaging result to Hamilton who slipped further behind Vettel in the Driver’s Championship, trailing by 14 points. Giving the position back to Bottas effectively conceded three points in the fight for the title.

The big question after the race was ‘would Hamilton regret his sportsmanship’ which was put to him, with his response being: “We’ll see if that’s really the case