How F1's title fight exploded amid Baku chaos

After seven races of mutual respect and cordial competition, the 2017 Formula 1 title battle between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel finally got physical on the streets of Azerbaijan.

A chaotic recipe of multiple collisions on a tightly enclosed street circuit, leading to multiple safety car periods and restarts, created conditions for the first controversial moment between this F1 season's two chief protagonists.

Had the Azerbaijan Grand Prix proceeded free of safety car periods, Hamilton and Vettel would most likely have finished one-two comfortably, with Hamilton slashing Vettel's championship points advantage into single digits by winning the race.

As it was, Vettel finished one place ahead of Hamilton to extend his lead by two, despite serving a 10-second stop and go penalty for deliberately driving into Hamilton under safety car conditions.

Hamilton called Vettel's driving "disrespectful" and said the four-time world champion had "disgraced himself" with his behaviour. Vettel thought - wrongly as it turned out - that Hamilton deliberately brake-tested him before one of those safety car restarts and took exception.

What Vettel did after inadvertently rear-ending Hamilton's Mercedes behind the safety car was inexcusable, and the penalty he received for swerving into his rival ultimately cost him this race.

Hamilton's headrest came loose after a mid-race red flag period, which required him to make an unscheduled pitstop. That would have handed victory to Vettel, if only the four-time champion had kept his emotions in check.

Into their breach stepped Daniel Ricciardo, who rose from 17th at the end of lap six to win a breathless race, ahead of Valtteri Bottas - who at one stage was a lap down - and Williams rookie Lance Stroll, who claimed an unlikely first podium finish of his F1 career.

All the talk afterwards was of course about Hamilton and Vettel, their on-track clash and the inevitable recriminations. But had Bottas not collided unfortunately with Kimi Raikkonen at Turn 2 after the start, it's likely the Hamilton/Vettel incident would never have happened.

That clash came as Raikkonen attempted to pass Bottas on the outside of the left-hander. Bottas bounced over the inside kerb and into his rival as they tried to get through the corner side by side, clearing the path for Vettel to undertake his ultimately fateful chase of Hamilton.

Having almost rear-ended Bottas by locking up into Turn 1 after the start, Vettel was suddenly clear in second place, as Bottas crabbed back to the pits with a puncture and Raikkonen dropped back with damage.

The broken bargeboard Raikkonen picked up in that clash also proved crucial to the outcome of the battle between Hamilton and Vettel.

The first safety car period came on lap 12 of 51, caused by Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso breaking down on the inside of the track at the exit of Turn 12.

When the restart came on lap 17, after Kvyat's car had been craned away, Raikkonen's damaged bargeboard finally broke free of his car completely and left debris strewn across the start/finish straight.

The safety car was immediately re-deployed so that marshals could sweep the circuit, which meant Hamilton would once again have to fend off Vettel at a restart.

The first one he'd managed expertly, backing the pack up on the short run down the hill between Turns 15 and 16 - the 'real' final corner of the lap before the snaking straight that leads to the startline. Hamilton waited until the exit of Turn 16 before bolting clear and leaving Vettel for dust.

"It's a very hard circuit to maintain position into Turn 1, because it's such a long straight," said Hamilton, who felt officials would have been better served to use the virtual safety car in order to help drivers maintain tyre temperature at higher speeds and reduce the chances of further incidents.

"I looked at the last race, I didn't do such a great job [at restarts], so I really studied, I made sure I was on top of it for this weekend, particularly as I was on pole.

"The safety car kept coming out, so obviously your first trick that works won't work again necessarily - particularly to a four-time world champion - so I had to come up with lots of different ways to make sure I was into Turn 1 in the lead.

"But the same point happens. By Turn 7, I'm told the safety car is going to come in; I'm allowed a 10-car-length gap between myself and the safety car while the lights are on, I go into Turn 15 more-or-less around that kind of gap, and as he [the safety car] goes down the hill I can see the lights switch off.

"At that point I don't need to accelerate and speed up and keep that gap, so I kept a consistent pace, probably a consistent deceleration down to the apex, and just didn't speed up from the apex. I did that first time and I did that again on the second time."

But second time around Hamilton and Vettel collided at the exit of Turn 15, Vettel seemingly caught by surprise at Hamilton's decision not to accelerate coming off the corner. Vettel rear-ended the Mercedes, threw his hands in the air in frustration, then immediately drove alongside his rival and swerved right into him, remonstrating with his free left hand as he went.

It looked like one of those situations where Vettel simply misjudged what Hamilton was likely to do - rather like expecting the car in front at a roundabout to go for a gap, accelerating yourself, then having to slam on the brakes again unexpectedly when that driver makes a different choice. Vettel thought Hamilton would accelerate, he didn't, and Vettel ran into the back of him.

The FIA's analysis of Mercedes' data cleared Hamilton of any wrong-doing, but Vettel was convinced Hamilton brake-tested him.

"We know the leader dictates the pace, but we were exiting the corner, he was accelerating, then he braked so much that I couldn't stop in time and ran in the back of him," said Vettel, who praised Hamilton's first restart as "brilliant" for almost costing him a place to Sergio Perez's Force India.

"He needs to understand that he can't do that. He's done it a couple of times - a couple of years ago in China where it was very close to having a crash in the back of the field.

"I just think that wasn't necessary. It was not the right way to do it - exiting the corner, accelerating and then braking. I don't think there was any point. I don't think it was very deliberate for him to brake-check me, I don't think he's that kind of guy, but obviously that's what he did. I wasn't happy with that."

So unhappy that he decided to drive into Hamilton in protest.

"I drove alongside, then we had a little contact, but I drove alongside mostly to raise my hand," Vettel added. "I didn't give him a finger or anything, I just wanted to tell him, because I can't literally talk to him, that was not right.

"I don't agree with the penalty - if you penalise me then you should penalise both of us. I think the penalty was very harsh."

Harsh or not, Vettel deserved a penalty. You cannot dispense your own brand of justice, however much you may feel you've been wronged. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner called it a "Tourette's moment" from his former driver.

"It just looked like a red mist moment to me," Horner said. "He's lost it and taken a swipe at him, which was only ever going to result in a penalty."

This is not the first time Vettel has overreacted to perceived injustice in the heat of the moment, his expletive laden outburst at race director Charlie Whiting and Max Verstappen during last year's Mexican GP being only the most recent example.

In Baku, Vettel would have been best served to save his complaints solely for the radio airwaves. Taking matters into his own hands crossed the line of acceptability and demeaned his status as a multiple world champion, but it also cost him a likely race victory.

"I didn't do any brake testing," insisted Hamilton, who felt Vettel's driving set a bad example for younger drivers. "I just did the same thing I'd done on the previous laps.

"When the safety car lights go out, I control the pace. I went into the corner with 50-bar of brake [pressure], I didn't increase that and I basically didn't accelerate out of the corner because I was trying to let the safety car go.

"Generally the car behind wants to get as close as possible and honestly, I think it's a misjudgement from him. To blame the car in front, I think some people don't like to own up to their own mistakes.

"That's the kind of thing you see in go-karts. It shows pressure can get to even some of the best of us."

The part of his tactics Hamilton did alter for the second restart was bunching the field along the main straight, rather than gunning it at the exit of Turn 16.

This backed Vettel into the chasing pack and the Ferrari only just managed to fend off challenges from Felipe Massa's Williams (on the inside) and the Force Indias of Perez and Esteban Ocon (on the outside) at Turn 1.

Vettel defended again along the following straight, and the concertina effect allowed Ocon to get inside Perez as the pack funnelled into Turn 2. The two team-mates went through the left-hander side-by-side, but collided at the exit as Ocon eased to the right and choked off Perez's space.

Raikkonen picked up a rear puncture in the immediate aftermath, as Perez's front wing shattered, and the circuit became so littered with debris that officials decided to red flag the race after 22 laps.

Mercedes used the stoppage to effect running repairs to what team boss Toto Wolff called "extensive" damage to the diffuser on Hamilton's car from the first Vettel impact. But of more significance was the failure to properly secure Hamilton's headrest when he returned to the car for the restart.

Hamilton attempted to jam it into position while driving, but was eventually forced into the pits at the end of lap 31, sacrificing a narrow lead over Vettel to have the problem rectified.

"We have to figure out why the headrest came loose - whether we need to improve on our design there or whether it wasn't properly locked," Wolff said. "The knobs that go into the hole are not very large..."

Vettel immediately put the hammer down, after being told he would need to pit to serve his stop/go penalty. Vettel came in two laps after Hamilton, but Vettel's in-lap was more than 2.3s quicker, which meant the Ferrari emerged seventh, crucially one place ahead of its main rival.

"Ten seconds is not enough for driving like that," fumed Hamilton over team radio, before resigning himself to a chase of the Ferrari.

With those two out of the picture, Ricciardo found himself unexpectedly leading the race, ahead of Stroll and Kevin Magnussen's Haas, which took the added benefit of Nico Hulkenberg breaking his Renault against the inside wall at Turn 7 after the red flag restart and Massa's Williams suffering a damper failure.

Ricciardo had started down in 10th after crashing in Q3, and things got worse when the Red Bull was forced into the pits on lap five to clear debris from a brake duct, dropping it to 17th.

But Ricciardo made steady progress back through the field and was up to ninth by the time of that fateful second safety car restart. He vaulted up to fifth when the Force Indias collided and Raikkonen punctured, and on the red flag restart pulled off a stunning double pass on the Williams duo of Massa and Stroll on the inside at Turn 1.

That move was reminiscent of the sort of skill and bravery that first elevated Ricciardo into grand prix racing's elite circle in 2014, and it ultimately won him this race once Vettel and Hamilton were forced to pit.

Ricciardo's fifth grand prix victory owed much to the misfortune of others, not least a Renault engine failure for his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen early on, but as a racing driver you take the wins wherever you find them.

"I have been pretty fortunate," Ricciardo said. "I've only had a few victories but pretty much all of them have come under pretty crazy circumstances."

Those "crazy circumstances" also allowed Bottas to unlap himself after that early crawl back to the pits and the Mercedes charged through the order after the red flag restart, eventually beating Stroll's Williams for second in a drag race across the finish line by just 0.105 seconds.

"I was pushing the maximum there was - I was doing like qualifying laps," said Bottas, who hunted Stroll down at more than a second per lap over the final 12 laps of the race.

"I was not quite sure where the finishing line was actually, but when they opened up the radio and I could hear the clapping in the background, I knew, 'OK, that was P2 then'. It showed that you should never give up."

Hamilton was not far from pulling a similar move on Vettel, coming just 0.212s short of beating his chief rival as the top five cars were blanketed by little more than six seconds at the finish.

There seemed a certain level of injustice at Hamilton finishing behind Vettel, given what transpired earlier in the race, but Vettel was so adamant he did nothing wrong in the immediate aftermath - in contravention of the FIA's analysis and that of almost everyone else - that Niki Lauda likened his defiance to Vettel's hero Michael Schumacher at his most indignant.

It remains to be seen whether this first flashpoint between Hamilton and Vettel becomes a portent. Vettel plans to phone Hamilton to clear the air before the next race; Hamilton says he plans to do his talking on the track.

Whatever happens next, the events of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix have certainly added a new dimension to their rivalry - and to the 2017 title fight.