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How Bottas proved he is no number two

Two weeks after Valtteri Bottas's Bahrain race day slump raised the spectre of team orders, he won a Russian Grand Prix that had looked out of Mercedes' reach

There is no better way to prove you are not merely the young number two driver to a triple Formula 1 world champion than single-handedly defeating your quicker rivals to score your first grand prix victory, utterly obliterating your decorated team-mate in the process.

Amid an electrifying start to F1 2017, with Ferrari and Mercedes closely matched at the front, and Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel the class of the field over the first three races of the campaign, Mercedes new boy Valtteri Bottas has found himself facing difficult questions about the likelihood of having to play faithful rear gunner in a fight between two legends of modern Formula 1.

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