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Bottas avenged unlucky 2018 defeat in Baku, taking his second victory of the campaign

FORGET, FOR A MOMENT, CHARLES Leclerc’s unfortunate qualifying accident in Baku just as it looked like he was about to dominate the whole weekend and thereby go some way to compensating for the late loss of victory in Bahrain two races earlier. His mishap put in place a set of circumstances that allowed Mercedes to sweep to a fourth 1-2 (Valtteri Bottas ahead of Lewis Hamilton), thereby disguising the competitive state of play between the two teams at that point. Four races in, on pure underlying performance it should have been Mercedes two/Ferrari two.

Instead, Baku just underlined the allround excellence of Mercedes. With Leclerc sidelined, they locked out the front row through cunning – effectively denying Vettel pole by a bit of choreographed trickery as they all left the pits for the final Q3 runs.

Pulling to the side – ostensibly to practise starts – just as Vettel had followed them out, trying to get their tow, left the German having to do his lap without the powerful slipstream reward down the long straight running alongside the Caspian.

The Mercs then each picked up tows worth 0.3sec. Vettel’s untowed time fell 0.2sec short of pole… Before crashing, Leclerc appeared to have had about 0.3sec on Vettel at a track where he always flies. But he seemed just a little too determined to make his mark, to get out of the support role, to shade Vettel – with disastrous consequences. Without that, it looked likely to have been a Ferrari front row lock-out. Instead, it was all silver, Bottas and Hamilton taking care not to touch through the first two turns in a way they wouldn’t have done if they’d been in rival teams. Bottas prevailed – and thereby took the win he was denied by a late puncture last year.