He simply shows everybody how good the Mercedes cars are, if George Russell wasn't enough last year.
On the other hand the Aston Martin cars are disappointing and Ferrari is impressively good (compared to last year) and pretty much constant.
Perez and Alonzo has great races and the golden raspberry award goes to Mazepin, although Kimi is also near...
Bottas is good enough to secure the constructor title for Mercedes every year and does not pose a threat to Hamilton. Mercedes does not need more, the car can become world champion with almost any driver pairing.
In contrast to last year, Aston Martin has a big problem with the rule changes at the rear, Alpine has solved that better and is rightly ahead of Aston Martin. The Ferrari-powered cars are still having problems, if not as blatant as last year, but are still lagging behind.