How Hamilton's fightback ended in more pain

Lap 36 of the 2016 Russian Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton has been revelling in some of his patented 'hammer time'.

He's whittled the gap to race leader Nico Rosberg down from around 13 seconds to just seven and a half. There are 17 laps to run. This isn't over.

Both Mercedes drivers have made their one and only pitstop of the race. This is looking like a flat-out fight to the finish, on a smooth circuit where unusually low tyre degradation actually allows that kind of driving in Formula 1 - if you have enough fuel to burn, which Mercedes invariably does.

After all the troubles Hamilton's endured over the early part of this F1 season - the first-corner collision with Valtteri Bottas in Bahrain; the MGU-H failure that put him to the back of the grid in China; the subsequent collision with Felipe Nasr that spoiled that race; and yet another MGU-H failure that restricted him to 10th on the grid in Russia - finally it looks as though he may have a genuine shot at winning a race and sparking his stuttering season into life.

"I fought hard and got myself back up there. I got myself up to second; got it [the gap] down from 12 seconds to seven seconds; I still had nearly 20 laps to go; I'm on it. I believe I had a chance to win."

Hamilton must have felt as though his poor luck was about to turn. He'd already received the helping hand of good fortune shortly after the start, managing to somehow dodge the chaos caused by Daniil Kvyat's overzealous braking into Turn 2.

"I didn't get a great start," explained Hamilton. "I put myself on the outside, because I could see everyone was on the inside. As I was turning in I saw out of the corner of my eye some commotion, so I turned left."

Hamilton darted to the runoff area as two Red Bulls and a Ferrari bounced off one another into the path of the chasing hordes. This time he was careful to avoid rejoining the circuit incorrectly (as he had been reprimanded for doing in qualifying) and ended the first lap fifth, behind Rosberg, Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari - which stole past Bottas's Williams under braking into Turn 2 after the start - and the second Williams of Felipe Massa.

Hamilton made short work of jumping Massa, drafting past the Williams into Turn 2 immediately after the safety car restart on lap four of 53.

Bottas pulled a similar move on Raikkonen, after the Ferrari locked up its brakes approaching the final corner, and when Raikkonen second-guessed a retaliation move at Turn 4 three laps later Hamilton seized on his chance to capitalise on the Ferrari's compromised momentum on the short run to Turn 5.

"I tried to pass Bottas and got some understeer and ran wide," explained Raikkonen. He [Hamilton] got a good run on me. I tried to block a little bit but it was too late, so I had to let him go."

Once up to third Hamilton's own momentum stalled a little, unable to find a way past a car motivated by identical Mercedes horsepower.

Hamilton's chance came after Bottas dived for the pits on lap 16. This was always likely to be a one-stop race for most cars, particularly the frontrunners, and Williams - buoyed by recent improvements to its technique and equipment - turned Bottas around in a reasonably nifty 2.7s.

Hamilton made his own stop one lap later, and the Mercedes mechanics were half a second slower fitting a set of soft tyres to their charge, but Hamilton's in-lap was more than 1.5s faster than Bottas's, which meant the two cars descended on Turn 2 together as Hamilton rejoined the action.

Bottas remained ahead, but his race was not with Hamilton ultimately and he put up little resistance when the Mercedes slipped down the inside of the Williams at Turn 2 on lap 19.

Having cleared his final obstacle Hamilton set about chasing down Rosberg, who made his own stop on lap 21. It was at this point Mercedes discovered all was not well with Rosberg's car.

"We had a problem on the MGU-K drive on Nico's car, which gave us some grey hair during the race," explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "It looked at a certain stage that he wouldn't finish."

Hamilton smelled blood. How sensational it would be if he could hunt down and pass his team-mate for victory and begin cutting into the hefty points deficit instead of watching it grow all the time.

What better way could there be to make up for all the woe his side of the Mercedes garage has suffered so far in 2016?

But this is not that kind of season for Hamilton it seems.

As Hamilton hunted Rosberg down the pitwall noticed the water pressure on the champion's Mercedes engine - the spare refitted after his qualifying problems - had started dropping alarmingly.

"After the pitstop we saw a sudden drop of water pressure, which was continuing to fall," explained Wolff. "That looked like a terminal failure.

"We don't know the root cause yet - somewhere in the assembly or on the chassis side most probably."

Mercedes informed Hamilton of the problem and he dropped his pace, allowing Rosberg - who had lost a chunk of his advantage to traffic as much as the problem affecting his own car - to balloon his cushion back into double figures.

The water pressure eventually stabilised, but the chase was off.

Hamilton would be forced to settle for a second place finish, while Rosberg maintained his perfect start to the season with a seventh consecutive grand prix victory.

"It was a miracle to get Lewis's car home," Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe told Autosport.

"He had no water pressure at all. When he asked if it had stabilised we weren't lying when we said it had - it was zero! There were a lot of crossed fingers..."

Ultimately, Hamilton will look back on this result as bittersweet.

On the one hand he can count himself lucky his engine actually held together long enough to get him to the finish at all, let alone in a solid second place - minimising the points lost in his title battle with Rosberg.

On the other he will see a golden chance to capitalise on a technical problem for Rosberg gone begging.

"Nothing has gone particularly well," rued Hamilton. "There is no reason why we can't win, it's just we have these bugs which are coming along.

"We did a fantastic job in terms of getting the car where it needed to be this weekend. I felt very strong with where we had the set-up. It was just another race I wasn't fully able to exploit that."

But it was another race that Rosberg was able to fully exploit. He seems to be having that kind of season - one where everything just seems to flow perfectly and go your way.

In a similar fashion to Australia, where brake overheating almost cost him dearly, some technical adjustments brought his faulty car to heel and got him home with yet another maximum score.

This is only the fifth time a driver has won the first four races of a season in the entire history of the F1 world championship. Ayrton Senna (1991, pictured), Nigel Mansell ('92) and Michael Schumacher ('94 and 2004) all went on to become champions when they each managed this feat.

"Of course it sounds cool, but you know that it's not my focus," said Rosberg. "It's a great start, but I'm just enjoying winning.

"Yes I have a good points lead but there's still 425 points up for grabs and I'm 40-something points ahead now.

"Four hundred and twenty five points to go! This is not even worth talking about at this point in time. Lewis is driving as strongly as ever. For sure he will bounce back."

Hamilton will bounce back undoubtedly, but he will have to do so in such a way that allows him to do something no other driver has managed before in the world championship.

Rosberg can afford to finish second to Hamilton in each of the next six races without losing his lead in the title race, and Hamilton knows he is also likely to face further penalties later in the year, given the rate at which his car is lunching its way through power unit components.

Hamilton enjoys the opportunity to rise to challenges. This is certainly the biggest he's faced. And he can take comfort from the fact he's salvaged three podiums amid all the setbacks.

Championships are often won on a driver's bad days, picking up points and getting the best results possible when things aren't going well. But Hamilton could desperately do with having some good days soon too, to arrest the momentum that is allowing Rosberg to sweep all before him.

At the moment it looks as though Hamilton will enjoy little help from other rivals potentially taking points away from his main one.

Ferrari came to Russia with updated internal combustion engines fitted to both cars, but got nowhere near challenging Mercedes in qualifying and came away from Sochi with Sebastian Vettel's SF16-H in pieces and Kimi Raikkonen's fuel-thirsty car a distant third.

"On this track, I don't have to say that I am surprised but it [the performance deficit to Mercedes] was expected," said Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene. "But I don't want that to happen again.

"If I had to define the championship this year, we are not the kind of team who like to win comfortably - we are looking for a big challenge.

"I don't want the team, and the team doesn't want, to give up. We have 17 races [left], so if you win 12 they can win the other five and then you can fight."

Arrivabene expects Barcelona's Catalunya circuit to suit Ferrari better than the Sochi Autodrom, but the way things have panned out over the first four races it's difficult to see Ferrari being anything other than second best again in the Spanish GP in a fortnight's time.

"First of all we don't have to make any more mistakes on our side," Arrivabene warned. "Second, I really trust that from now on we can perform much better than what we are performing at now.

"The configuration of the tracks that are coming, the tokens that we spent - we are happy they are going to help us more in Spain than at the track in Russia.

"Of course, the other ones [rivals] are not sleeping and waiting for us, so we need to fight."

But Ferrari is not looking likely to be in the fight at all at the moment, which won't help Hamilton in his efforts to take points back from Rosberg quickly.

Not that this will be of any concern to the Russian GP winner, who will feel karma repaid him with a Sochi victory after the throttle damper failure that he felt robbed him of first place at last year's race here.

"Winning F1 races is not like an open goal - I don't think that's a good comparison ¬- but of course it [the current run] is not something I could've expected," Rosberg added.

"It's been a great four races, very enjoyable, but I'm aware that it's not going to continue like that forever. I just need to mentally prepare for that."

It's often said you need a bit of luck on your side to win a championship. Rosberg is driving well, but Hamilton's constant problems are also giving him an easy ride at the front.

Given the way Hamilton's luck is running, and the fact Ferrari is not really at the races yet this year, if Rosberg is to finally become world champion for the first time in his career, this is surely now his best chance.

The world now waits to see if he can grasp it firmly with both hands, or whether Hamilton can somehow steal it away against increasingly unlikely odds.