The unfortunate situation overcoming Lewis Hamilton has caused an unusual situation for Bottas. For some time now Bottas has been at the receiving end of bad luck and poor perfomances. Not to mention also getting an overall negative response from the Formula 1 fans as well.

This weekend Bottas will surely be at immense pressure to be on top of his game. George Russell, the British driver has stepped in (from Williams) and will drive Lewis Hamilton's car for the weekend and who knows maybe next weekend too if Hamilton can't recover fast enough.

If Russell beats Bottas fair and square this will dent a huge hole in Bottas's confidence for the rest of his career. He himself said in an interview when brutally and directly asked the question by an interviewer that "If Russell does beat me that will not look so good". He also struggled to answer the question stating "To be honest I did not look at that situation and I am not sure how to answer that".

So far two practice sessions have underwent and Russell is on top of the standings for both sessions
(0.15 seconds faster than everyone else) with Bottas making a lot of mistakes. However we must understand that practice session times means nothing and each car might have different setups to get the team sufficient data for the qualifying rounds and race.

My verdict:

Though personally I would like to see a new F1 winner this time around, no hard feelings for Russell but Bottas has a higher chance of winning the race.

Why ? because experience. Bottas has raced for Merc for a long time now, different conditions, different tracks Bottas has the knowledge on how to handle the car and still push it to the limits which Russell lacks for the moment.

Also without a strong knowledge on the car's capability which I highly doubt a few practice sessions could get you, I believe Russel might find it hard in the qualifying sessions to find that extra milliseconds of time going around the track to get that edge over Bottas.

Overall an exciting time to watch F1, what the qualifying session unfolds today will be interesting to see and it will test Russell's talent for sure.

FP3 will start a few hours from now, I am excited !