How a Mercedes ‘dummy’ completed Ferrari’s ‘double whammy’

Charles Leclerc controlled Friday and Saturday practice but his crash during the second part of qualifying triggered the unravelling of Ferrari's hopes of locking out the front row in Baku.

The team's disappointment escalated when Sebastian Vettel was limited to third as the Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton swept to an unlikely one-two.

Baku's layout poses two different challenges: two high-speed sectors, which require top speed, connected by a sequence of tight corners in the middle.

Circumstances conspired so that Ferrari, which felt "out of reach" to Bottas after practice, fell short in both areas.

The first part of what Mercedes' team boss Toto Wolff agreed was a "double whammy" came at the start of Q3.

Exiting the pits for the crucial final flying laps, Vettel was fifth in a queue of cars headed by Bottas and Hamilton, only for the two Mercedes drivers to suddenly pull to the left and stop before the pit exit. Lando Norris (McLaren), Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo) and Vettel passed them, which led Vettel to ask both Mercedes drivers about their "fake starts" after the session: "Did you do a start or did you just stop?"

Hamilton said "We just dummied you basically", and when Vettel asked again if they had done a practice start, his smiling rivals said it was "clutch calibration".

They were right to be pleased, especially as after that move Norris and Giovinazzi slowed down at Turn 4 and Vettel was left out in front without a tow, which he said could be worth half a second but reckoned the real value was 0.3s.

He admitted afterwards he did "sort of regret that I maybe didn't take the gamble" of holding back to get a tow, and that regret is validated by the numbers.

On his final lap, compared to his first flier in Q3, when he had a tow from Kimi Raikkonen's Alfa Romeo, Vettel was more than two tenths slower in the final sector and his speed over the finish line was 7.8km/h down.

While the Mercedes drivers did not gain a major tow themselves by falling to the back of the train, crucially Vettel missed out on one.

That hurt the Ferrari in a straight line, but it was also constrained through the corners.

"Cars in front of you, that just cut the hole in the air, is really good around here, and advantageous," said Wolff.

"It was a double whammy. He [Vettel] was out by himself, no tow, and the ambient temperatures came towards us.

"Our car got better the colder it went."

At the same time, Ferrari's car got worse, as Vettel suddenly faced a deficit to Mercedes in the middle part of the lap as well.

Mercedes' best middle sector improved by almost 0.7s from Q1 to Q3, a bigger gain than any other team.

That indicates that the track changed in Mercedes' favour, as the conditions conspired to reverse the trend from Friday, when Ferrari enjoyed an emphatic cornering advantage.

This was because qualifying was delayed by almost a full hour by the two delays caused by Leclerc's crash and the earlier Robert Kubica shunt in the same place.

During that time, temperatures dropped considerably.

The FIA's measuring point registered a 10.4C drop from 36.7C to 26.3C and this would likely have been exaggerated in other parts that were in the shade of the tall buildings that line the circuit.

Asked by Autosport about the impact that had on Ferrari's erstwhile strong performance in the tight middle sector, Vettel said: "It was tricky for us with the track conditions, with the temperatures dropping.

"Obviously in sector two you have more of the corners, so it's quite normal when you struggle with the car and don't have the confidence around here, the place you lose most is sector two."

Trying to compensate for the reduced grip in the corners also played a part in Vettel sacrificing greater top speed.

"The track was getting cooler, the car was more difficult to drive and I prioritised to push on the outlap to have the tyres in the window when I started the lap," he said, explaining why he did not wait so he had a car in front to slipstream.

It worked to a degree, because Vettel was half a second faster through the middle sector on his second lap than his first flier.

However, Mercedes' supremacy in the twisty bits remained, completing the double whammy.

At the end of Q3, Vettel trailed Bottas by 0.302s and Hamilton by 0.243s.

Neither his middle sector, which was 0.073s slower than Bottas, nor the 0.23s he lost in the final sector compared to his first run cost him pole position.

However, the combined deficit was enough to condemn him to third place.

Leclerc, who looked to have an edge on Vettel, might have had enough in the tank to overcome such deficits, and in any case would have given Ferrari a second car to deploy its own slipstream strategy had it wished to.

Instead, his crash ruled him out of contention and, ironically, played a part in thwarting Vettel's efforts as well.