How Hamilton’s title charge has suddenly unravelled

It's amazing how quickly things can get away from you in motor racing. Before Formula 1's 2017 title fight turned controversial in Azerbaijan, Lewis Hamilton was on a trajectory that suggested he would soon take control of the destiny of this world championship.

It seemed only a matter of time. Hamilton won in Canada convincingly, was leading from pole again in Baku, but then chief rival Sebastian Vettel drove into him under the safety car, sparking a bizarre sequence of events that means Hamilton now trails Vettel by a large margin, after losing further ground at the Austrian Grand Prix.

How to maintain your personal equilibrium amid a title challenge that has suddenly unravelled significantly, amid a series of setbacks for which Hamilton finds himself utterly blameless?

He's been here before of course. In 2014, the season began with an engine failure and Hamilton spent several races clawing back the 25-point deficit to Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, only to suffer brake failure in Canada and fall 22 points behind.

Hamilton spun off in qualifying in Austria, had brake failure in qualifying in Germany, then suffered a car fire in qualifying in Hungary, but eventually strung together a winning run that stole the crown from Rosberg.

Last season, Hamilton again found himself seriously on the back foot thanks to an unfortunate sequence of events: a gearbox penalty and engine problem in China, more mechanical malady with the engine in Russia, a major collision with Rosberg in Spain, then a qualifying crash and trouble with his energy recovery systems de-rating in Baku.

Hamilton turned up in Austria 24 points behind Rosberg, they collided again on the last lap, but Hamilton still won to slash the gap to just 11 points. But for a further engine failure in Malaysia, it's likely Hamilton would have been crowned champion for a fourth time.

Hamilton sometimes struggled to process the misfortune that seemed to plague him last season, and now he faces a sterner test than he has seen at any stage since Mercedes became a genuine title contender.

That Hamilton's headrest came loose while he led in Baku (Mercedes tweaked the design of the locking pins that are supposed to hold it in place for Austria) meant he missed out on a certain victory.

Instead of gaining a championship lead of three points, Hamilton ended up losing two to Vettel, despite the Ferrari driver serving a 10-second stop and go penalty for his safety car transgression.

If that weren't injustice enough for Hamilton to take, the FIA elected to take no further action against Vettel in the build-up to Austria, instead satisfied in eliciting an apology from Vettel, demanding he perform some community service in educating drivers at the lower levels about proper on-track etiquette, and issuing the Ferrari driver with a final warning over his future conduct.

Hamilton did not seem impressed by this verdict, suggesting FIA president Jean Todt should perhaps explain why no further action was taken. To darken Hamilton's mood further, Mercedes knew he would take a five-place grid penalty heading into this race, thanks to a problem discovered with the gearbox after Baku.

Hamilton's road got rockier still when Mercedes elected to put him on an alternative tyre strategy, which meant progressing through the second stage of qualifying on the super-soft tyre. Hamilton lost a key run on the softest compound (the ultra-soft), which he felt played a part in his failure to beat team-mate Valtteri Bottas and Vettel in Q3 and meant he started eighth on the grid rather than sixth.

Instead of contending for victory and potentially at least slashing Vettel's 14-point margin in half in Austria, Hamilton would be forced into a damage-limitation run. Limit the damage he ultimately did, with a fine recovery drive to fourth in a difficult race, while a superb second career victory for Bottas - achieved in the face of enormous pressure from Vettel in a nail-biting finish - ensured Hamilton left Spielberg in better shape than he otherwise might.

Bottas spoke after the race about how small details make all the difference between success and failure in Formula 1, and how he is gradually becoming better at understanding and utilising these details. But how different the mood at Mercedes might have been had Bottas been penalised for jumping the start.

The way Bottas rocketed away from the line from pole left Vettel convinced "100%" that Bottas had transgressed the rules, while Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo reckoned Bottas had been "lucky", but FIA analysis said Bottas reacted 0.201 seconds after the red lights went out.

"It was an absolutely synchronised start, so it was right on the limit," said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner. "Our analysis showed he jumped it by 0.1s, the FIA said he had missed it by 0.2s reaction. It was right on the edge."

Bottas's car did move slightly before the lights went out, but within a defined tolerance, so the stewards took no action after investigating the incident.

"I had no doubt it wasn't a false start," Bottas said. "But I knew it was the best start I've probably ever had! I don't know how I measure 0.2s, but we are doing a lot of start practice and reaction time practice, and in the practice you can hit better reaction times than those many times.

"It was just the perfect start, really. You just need to be alert on the moment you think the lights are going to go off. Everything came together."

Vettel described his rival's start as "unhuman", but inhuman or not, Bottas got away legally in the eyes of the stewards and he completed the first lap almost 1.5s clear of the chasing Ferrari. In the end, the two would finish much closer than that...

Meanwhile, Hamilton made swift progress in his efforts to make up for lost ground. He benefited from Max Verstappen's clutch problem off the line to take seventh and briefly held sixth on the first lap, before losing out slightly in the melee at Turn 3.

He then dispatched Sergio Perez's Force India for sixth under braking for Turn 3 on lap six of 71, and jumped Romain Grosjean for fifth around the outside into Turn 4 two laps later, after the Haas ran wide at the previous corner.

Hamilton closed to within a second of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari on the 19th lap, but despite applying significant pressure - and Raikkonen battling poor balance on the ultra-soft tyre plus an engine driveability problem that proved impossible to correct despite various switch adjustments - Hamilton could not find a way past.

Once confident Hamilton could pit for fresh tyres without falling back behind Grosjean, Mercedes called him in at the end of lap 31 to put him in clean air and vault him past the Ferrari strategically. When Ferrari didn't react, electing instead to extend Raikkonen's stint for fear he would drop behind Hamilton regardless, Hamilton was effectively up to fourth.

Vettel made his pitstop at the end of lap 34, while Mercedes left Bottas out until the end of lap 41, hoping he would have enough of a lead to get in and out of the pits without falling behind Raikkonen.

Bottas didn't quite pull that off, but moved quickly past the ailing Ferrari around the outside at Turn 4 on lap 44, after Raikkonen locked up under braking for the Turn 3 hairpin. Raikkonen immediately dived for the pits, meaning he would drop to the tail of the leading group but with fresher rubber than his rivals.

Ultimately, Raikkonen failed to join the battles at the front that made the final 26 laps of the Austrian GP a thrilling conclusion.

At the very front, Vettel trailed Bottas by 4.384s at the end of lap 45, but Vettel - energised by a better feeling from his Ferrari on the super-soft compound - hunted the Mercedes down at a rate of 0.143s per lap.

After looking so assured in the first part of the race on ultra-softs, Bottas was suddenly on the ropes.

"The car was really strong in the first stint," Bottas said. "A bit more tricky in the second stint, with a blister I had in the rear left. I knew the blister was getting worse and worse, I could feel it, and every single time I was approaching a right-hand corner it was always more tricky."

Given the Red Bull Ring predominantly features right-hand corners, this was not good news for Bottas, but in a denouement of remarkable similarity to his previous F1 win at Sochi, Bottas was somehow able to hang on against the impending red tide.

What's more, much as a Vettel misunderstanding with Felipe Massa's Williams during late lappery in Russia gave Bottas crucial breathing space, Bottas put a lap on Sergio Perez's Force India with an easy pass at Turn 4 with three laps to run in Austria while Vettel was held up through the medium-speed left-handers that followed. The time lost crucially put the Ferrari out of DRS range for another lap.

"I think with him [Perez] I gained compared to Sebastian, but I felt there was a couple of incidents before that I definitely lost more than him," said Bottas, who described the fight with Vettel in the closing stages as a "deja vu" of April's Russian GP.

"It's always difficult to say which one gained or lost, because there are so many backmarkers with a short lap. You try to get through them as quickly as you can and sometimes you lose a bit more time than the car behind, sometimes you might gain something."

In the end, Bottas gained enough overall to beat Vettel to victory by a scant 0.658s, only fractionally larger than the final gap between the pair in Russia.

"It all ended up well," Bottas added. "I had to do no mistakes, a bit like in Russia. I was just focusing on whatever was ahead and making the most out of every single corner. I was very happy the race did end on that lap, because it could have been tricky after."

Vettel felt he only needed "one more lap" to beat Bottas to victory, while a few seconds back along the road, Hamilton was engaged in a similar chase of Ricciardo's Red Bull for the final podium spot.

Ricciardo had earlier muscled his way past Raikkonen's Ferrari at Turn 3 on the opening lap, then brilliantly hung on to the pace of the leading cars in what he felt would not be one of Red Bull's strongest races. However, Ricciardo gradually found himself reeled in by Hamilton as the Mercedes driver utilised the benefit of softer tyres to close the Red Bull down through the second stint.

Hamilton got a run on Ricciardo coming out of Turn 3 on the penultimate lap, but couldn't quite pull off a pass into Turn 4 as Ricciardo defended the inside line.

"He defended his position very well," conceded Hamilton, who had to adjust switches inside his Mercedes' cockpit to counter an aerodynamic balance that was further forward than ideal for his stint on Pirelli's ultra-soft compound. "I don't think I could have done better."

Maybe so, but this sequence of events still meant Hamilton left the Red Bull Ring trailing Vettel by 20 points in the world championship, with victory for Bottas closing him to within 15 points of Hamilton.

And that is the other dynamic Hamilton must now give increasing consideration too - that while victories for Bottas are useful in denying Vettel valuable points, they also serve to bring the second Mercedes gradually into title contention, placing increasing pressure on Hamilton from behind.

In previous seasons, the kind of negative snowball effect that has set Hamilton back in Azerbaijan and Austria might have darkened his mental outlook considerably, perhaps leading to ill-advised public proclamations and internal stress.

But Hamilton's attitude is more phlegmatic this year, helped by a fresh dynamic within Mercedes that he clearly finds more productive. The triple world champion was remarkably sanguine in the aftermath of a second successive difficult race, praising his team-mate's "fantastic job" and taking solace in turning a deficit of 19.601s to Bottas at the end of lap 26 into an ultimate defeat of just 7.430s.

"I don't think there's a call for me to do anything else than [what] I'm already doing," Hamilton said. "It's not like the team aren't on my side or they're not working hard or I'm not pushing them hard enough.

"All I can do is try to inspire them with the drive that I had today. When I look at the race trace, I was actually quickest of everyone, so I actually had the strongest race [of everyone].

"So it was actually really positive. I don't think the points really reflect that, but it is what it is. There's nothing else I can do. I've just got to keep driving the way I have been and hope things get better."

Hamilton will be chasing his fourth consecutive British Grand Prix victory on home ground at Silverstone this weekend, which would allow him to regain some much-needed momentum in a title chase that is suddenly and unexpectedly slipping further from his reach.