How Mercedes squandered its victory chance

Mercedes had the Bahrain Grand Prix won on lap 21. Well, almost. According to team boss Toto Wolff, there was only a one-in-ten chance of Ferrari winning despite Sebastian Vettel being in the lead. And yet, 36 laps later, Vettel claimed his second consecutive grand prix victory by 0.699 seconds from Valtteri Bottas.

"I think we had won the race already after coming out on the medium behind Sebastian with a gap we were able to close down, knowing Ferrari would either have to stop once again or would run out of tyre if we were to push them," said Wolff when asked if his team could have done anything differently. "This was the moment I would say 90% probability was on us winning, and we lost that."

For the second race in succession, the question is how did Mercedes lose from a winning position? In the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, it was an ostensibly simple combination of an unfortunately-timed virtual safety car and a team miscalculation of lap time deltas, but in Bahrain it was far more complicated - at least in terms of the on-track machinations.

Things started to unravel for Mercedes long before the 90% calculation was made. During the race in Melbourne, Lewis Hamilton had a hydraulic leak in the gearbox leading to bearing damage that didn't prevent him finishing, but did necessitate a premature change in Bahrain. The result was a five-place grid penalty relegating Hamilton from fourth to ninth on the grid.

Friday and Saturday did not go especially well for Mercedes, with struggles to keep the rear temperatures under control on the supersoft tyres proving to be a big problem. This continued into qualifying, with Bottas and Hamilton separated by just over a tenth-of-a-second and on the second row behind Ferrari's Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. That Hamilton ran on the softs in Q2 was significant, as it not only meant he started on them and went into the race on a one-stop plan, but it also ensured he wouldn't have to use the troublesome (for Mercedes) supersoft in the race.

"On a track like Bahrain, with a very abrasive circuit and lots of heat, we struggle," said Wolff after qualifying. "On the softs the car was much better, but putting the softer compound on, the supersoft, it looks like we're overheating and therefore not extracting the optimum grip.

"In the last years, we always seemed to struggle on particular circuits. We were struggling in Monaco, a bit in Budapest, Sepang, Singapore. Bahrain was one where we were successful in terms of results in the past, but sometimes it was not trivial to find the right set-up."

Mercedes was always going to be stronger in the race, and so it proved. But with Ferrari showing a good turn of pace and having the advantage of track position, Bottas and Hamilton needed the race to come to them. Hamilton's penalty meant Bottas was always likely to be the main man for Mercedes, and he was. But the Finn's performance was that of an accomplished understudy rather than a genuine leading player.

"If there was a chance of the race win I lost it in the first laps" Lewis Hamilton

At the start, Vettel assumed the lead while Raikkonen struggled for grip on the dirty side of the track and lost second place to Bottas. This immediately nullified Vettel's rear gunner. But while Bottas tracked Vettel at the front during the first stint, there were some other, very significant, moves that made victory simultaneously more and less likely for Mercedes.

Hamilton jumped to eighth off the line by scything between Esteban Ocon's Force India and Nico Hulkenberg's Renault. But this was the only thing that went right for Hamilton early on, as his victory chances took a hit when he dropped back behind both on the brakes after being boxed in into Turn 1, then left the door wide open into Turn 8 to let Fernando Alonso past.

"If there was a chance of the race win I lost it in the first laps," said Hamilton. "I had a really good start and then I opted to go down the inside of Magnussen but I saw him move and then I couldn't come across to the left because I had all the guys on the left and then I was on the defence for ages, then I came round in 10th."

He also let Max Verstappen, who started 15th after an unexpected 150bhp kick from his Renault engine had spun his Red Bull into the barrier exiting Turn 2 during Q1, get on his case. On lap two, Verstappen legitimately dived up the inside into Turn 1 but carried in too much speed, couldn't hold the car tight enough and clobbered Hamilton's front-right wheel with his rear-left. The result was a puncture and damage eliminating the Red Bull from the race shortly after he rejoined having visited the pits.

While he had three wheels on his wagon, Verstappen's cruised past Daniel Ricciardo's stricken machine that had suffered a sudden loss of all electrical power while running fourth, suspected to be a consequence of an energy store problem. Red Bull had looked fast, perhaps the fastest, on race pace in practice and this wiped out a serious threat from behind for Mercedes. Up went the victory chances for the Silver Arrows.

After the intervention of the virtual safety car, Bottas continued to chase Vettel with Raikkonen slipping back. Hamilton got himself back in gear and started to recover. After restarting ninth, he jumped to sixth in one great move by passing Alonso, Ocon and Hulkenberg on the run into Turn 1 on lap six. Soon after, he dispatched the remarkable Pierre Gasly, driving a brilliant race on his first taste of the front end of the F1 field after starting fifth, for fourth place. That put Hamilton in play, but Bottas was still the real victory shot for Mercedes.

Given the pitstop undercut was an effective weapon, Mercedes called Bottas in on lap 18 after he had closed the gap from 3.2s to 2.165s. Ferrari responded instantly and brought Vettel in. Mercedes told Bottas to stay out, and with Vettel seemingly committing to a two-stopper by taking soft Pirellis it opted to leave him out for a couple more laps. After Raikkonen had also come in, Bottas then pitted in to take mediums and attempt a one-stop race, rather than the softs and two-stop that was plan A.

This was the point where Mercedes supposedly had a winning hand, or 90% of one, and all Bottas needed to do was play the cards well enough to gain track position. Initially, he and Mercedes assumed this would be handed to them by Vettel stopping again. He crossed the line at the end of his outlap to start lap 22. For the next nine laps, starting with his fastest of the whole race, Bottas took 0.396s per lap out of Vettel to close to within 4.175s.

For a few laps, Mercedes and Bottas held the gap, but from laps 35-43 Bottas dropped back at a rate of 0.434s per lap, still comfortably within the pitstop window. The penny then dropped and on lap 44, Bottas picked up the pace into the 1m34s bracket in a bid to close what had grown to an 8.2s gap. With Vettel firmly in the 1m35s and starting to struggle more, the gap closed rapidly. But it wasn't until the end of lap 55 that Bottas got into DRS range. That meant he had just two laps, and four-and-a-half bites of the DRS, to make a move.

His chance came on the last lap as he closed rapidly on Vettel on the approach to the braking zone for Turn 1. But after a half-hearted look, Bottas backed out of it. He wasn't close enough to attempt a move after the DRS zone on the back straight into Turn 11, and had to settle for second best.

"I was definitely watching him to see if he left the door open or if he was expecting or not expecting me to try something," said Bottas. "I saw he was expecting it and ready to block the overtake, so I understood there was no possibility. You could always kind of go for it and bang wheels and have a crash, but it was just a bit too far. Not that much, I was only a few metres away and could have gone for it. But that was just a little too far."

The question is whether Hamilton, Ricciardo or Verstappen might have, in the same position, made the move stick. There were plenty in the paddock who thought they would have done, and again question marks about Bottas's killer instinct in wheel-to-wheel battle, which has been a discussion point since his Williams days, were raised.

He's a classy driver trying to assert himself as a top gun and retain his Mercedes seat, and this felt like a significant moment in his bid to earn a new Mercedes deal. Then again, at least he didn't do what Verstappen did earlier in the race and come away with nothing.

Behind, Hamilton closed to just 6.512s off the lead over the line, gaining from Raikkonen's pitstop disaster on lap 36. Called in for his second stop while running 13.3s ahead of Hamilton, and 1.6s behind Bottas, Raikkonen left the pitbox after being given, erroneously, the green light.

But as a result of the left-rear wheel proving stubborn, the stop wasn't over and he hit the wheelman, who suffered two breaks to his leg. Raikkonen was told to stop, and that was that for his race. That meant Mercedes didn't have to worry about a Ferrari charging from behind, further strengthening its position.

It wasn't just Bottas who squandered this 90% victory shot. What if Mercedes had timed it right for him to undercut Vettel at the first stop and gained track position there? Then, might he have simply run to the end on mediums in the lead and taken his fourth grand prix win? And if he had stayed on Plan A, would this have ensured Vettel stopped again and brought one-stopping Hamilton into play?

"There was nothing under control. I was doing the maths with 10 laps to go, and he's going to catch me" Sebastian Vettel

"We were going to stop on the lap when Sebastian did," said Bottas. "When he didn't stop we had to do the opposite and do a few more laps, which in the end maybe was a good thing because if we would have stopped that lap we would have stopped for a two-stop. I'm not sure with the soft tyre we could have done as long a stint as Sebastian did."

And what if Mercedes had let him attack more during the nine-lap phase when he dropped back? Part of that was down to managing the temperatures of the car, but part of it was also conservatism on the part of Mercedes. Could he have been allowed to push slightly harder, and maybe had a few more laps to try to pass Vettel? Or would the tyres have given up?

There's an interesting comparison to the two other drivers who did similar stints on the mediums that suggests Mercedes might have been too conservative. Marcus Ericsson ran three laps shorter than Bottas and averaged only 1.680s slower. Ericsson was 2s slower than Hamilton, who stopped three laps later, while Stoffel Vandoorne stopped two laps after Hamilton and was only 1.461s slower than him. Different cars, different situations, but it hints at complacency from Mercedes, given that it surely had the car to have a bigger advantage over those midfielders?

What must not be ignored is the part Vettel's drive played in victory. There's an unflashy brilliance to what he did, for many drivers would have failed to make the softs last the seemingly impossible 39 laps he did to get to the end. Add to this the need to manage the closing rate of Bottas and it adds up to a brilliantly executed victory. He said on the radio with 10 laps to go that he had everything under control, but it was far from straightforward.

"That was a lie, there was nothing under control," said Vettel. "When they told me the pace of Valtteri at that time, there was no way I could do that. I was doing the maths inside the car with 10 laps to go, at that pace he's going to catch me!

"I tried to keep it as clean as possible. I tried to make the tyres last, nursed them as much as I could, and it worked. But just! Valtteri had a bit of a sniff, but fortunately he ran out of laps."

Vettel genuinely earned what stands as one of his best victories in F1. But you can't help but think he was relieved it wasn't one of the more incisive of the frontrunners chasing him down in those final laps. Hamilton, six seconds away, and the two Red Bull drivers, long since out of the race, would surely have been more formidable foes.

Any of those drivers in a Mercedes might well have turned a 90% victory shot into a dead cert. And Bottas, partly responsible for the 10% chance of defeat coming to pass along with Vettel's excellence and the Mercedes strategy, will know this more than anyone.