Why six drivers had the speed to win in Baku

After finishing second to Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas for the second time this season, Lewis Hamilton pointed to a series of factors that, combined, cost him a potential Azerbaijan Grand Prix victory.

But he wasn't the only man in the race who could legitimately do that, as Charles Leclerc's qualifying shunt and Sebastian Vettel's failure to get a tow in qualifying cost a Ferrari team that looked the class of the field in practice.

Less obvious was the threat of the prodigiously fast Red Bulls in race conditions, after Max Verstappen's innocuous lock-up in Q1 compromised his qualifying and Pierre Gasly's litany of penalties held the Honda-powered team back on a weekend where, if either had got a break at the front, they'd have stayed there.

Six drivers might have won this race, but it was Bottas who claimed his fifth grand prix victory thanks to avoiding any significant errors and missed opportunities - and a favour from a Williams driver.

Backmarkers are the last thing an under-pressure race leader usually wants to see in the closing stages of a grand prix, but Bottas had good reason to be thrilled to be bearing down on the recalcitrant Williams of George Russell at the end of the penultimate lap of the race.

With Hamilton breathing down his neck into the last turn, a second behind and with the promise of a mighty tow and DRS assistance, Bottas immediately started to pull away in Russell's slipstream on the long run out of the final real corner.

It must have been as disheartening for Hamilton as it was delightful for Bottas, as not only did the tow give Bottas time but it also ensured he had the DRS available - allowing him to get to Turn 1 with his lead grown by 50%. This was one of the things that went against Hamilton.

When the new-look, take-no-prisoners Bottas won the Australian GP it might have been a flash in the pan. This was a more impressive triumph, following an unexpected pole position.

While Russell inadvertently helped, Bottas withstood the pressure from Hamilton brilliantly - although we'll never know what might have happened had the Williams not been there to latch on to.

"Selfishly, I could have pushed a lot harder and Valtteri would have lost positions" Lewis Hamilton

"There was some traffic, obviously you lose time mostly but sometimes actually you can gain from it like here if you can get a nice tow on the straight and get the DRS," said Bottas.

"It's always a very welcome bonus when Lewis is putting pressure behind!"

Russell was fighting his own battles but he wanted to ensure he didn't get in the way, which he successfully achieved despite joking that "Lewis is probably not my best friend currently".

"I was aware they were racing," said Russell. "I had put on the soft tyres at the end and just couldn't get them working so I felt like I was driving on ice.

"I thought, 'I hope I don't get in the way here', especially being Mercedes [contracted]."

By taking his second win in four races, Bottas reclaimed the world championship lead to build on his promising start to the season. It's a clear sign of his determination to go down fighting even if he does lose his Mercedes seat - although on this form here's no reason why he would.

But as Hamilton admitted after the race, perhaps he was a little too accommodating to his team-mate, having briefly taken the lead at the start.

In China, Bottas lost pole position to wheelspin over the startline and he had another so-so getaway from pole in Azerbaijan.

This allowed Hamilton to edge ahead by around half a car length, only for Bottas to leave his braking later and sling his Mercedes around the outside of Turn 1.

Hamilton left him space and, despite attacking on the drag down to Turn 2, then again to Turn 3, couldn't wrest back his very shortlived lead.

"I could have done a better job at the start, I was a little bit on the cautious side," said Bottas.

"I didn't want to get the wheelspin started, so I was rather smooth on getting on the power. But Lewis had a good start, so that's why he was on the inside and we were pretty much side by side through Turn 1, so I was just carrying the speed on the outside. The same thing in Turn 2, leaving enough space. It was nice and fair."

Hamilton wasn't exactly soft, but perhaps would have hung a rival who wasn't his team-mate out to dry at the first corner.

"Selfishly, I could have pushed a lot harder and Valtteri would have lost positions and I would have gained," said Hamilton. "Most likely he would have been overtaken by Ferrari or something like that."

But despite losing the race and the championship lead, by one point, Hamilton will be happy to put this one down to a weekend at a track he doesn't get on with and where Bottas thrives. After all, one swallow doesn't make a summer - and neither do two - so this is still Hamilton's team.

That the intra-Mercedes battle was the fight for victory shows how disappointing Ferrari's weekend was.

Fastest throughout practice, things started to unravel in the second stage of qualifying when Charles Leclerc crashed at the narrow Turn 8 before Sebastian Vettel, as Ferrari struggled with the tyres as track temperatures dropped, faded to third in Q3.

Leclerc had been the quicker Ferrari driver for much of the weekend and, despite starting down in eighth, the surprisingly strong performance of the medium Pirellis compared to the softs (that were struggling with graining with a high track temperature and heavy fuel load) at least allowed him to bring himself into contention.

Bottas finished the first lap 1.896 seconds clear of Hamilton and extended his lead by an average of 0.128s over the next 10 laps. That gave him a lead of 3.180s, and by the time Vettel pitted early from third he had already dropped over 10s behind Bottas.

While the top seven all started on soft Pirellis, Leclerc was on a fresh set of mediums. This was because he'd damaged a set of tyres in the Q2 crash (having already set a time good enough for Q3), which had to be replaced. Initially, he slipped to 10th behind Renault's Daniel Ricciardo, but soon started to scythe his way to the front.

With a series of DRS-assisted passes on the long drag to Turn 1, he dispatched Ricciardo (lap three), Daniil Kvyat (lap four), McLaren duo Carlos Sainz Jr and Lando Norris (lap five) and then Sergio Perez (lap six).

At that point, he was 2.746s behind fourth-placed Max Verstappen, who had lost valuable time in the early laps behind Perez before passing the Racing Point driver at the start of lap six. It took Leclerc little time to close on Verstappen, taking fourth from him at the end of lap nine.

Ferrari was right to bring the struggling Vettel into the pits on lap 11 of 51, with the two Mercedes following over the next two laps. The undercut allowed Vettel to close to a second off the back of Hamilton, who emerged from his stop five seconds behind Bottas.

Once Verstappen had stopped on lap 14 and come out 11s behind Vettel, the stage was set - the four pursuers on the mediums who didn't have to stop again chasing Leclerc, who did.

Leclerc had a 13s advantage over Bottas after the stops, and managed to hold onto that initially. But from lap 16 onwards, on older rubber, he started to fade.

Over the next 16 laps, Leclerc was 1.129s per lap slower than fastest man Verstappen, with Hamilton, Vettel and Bottas closing at around a second per lap. During this phase, all moved into his safety car window.

Ferrari's strategy with Leclerc was the logical one, as not only did he have to go deep into the race on the mediums to make a one-stopper work, but it also created a short window where a safety car or virtual safety car interruption would have allowed Leclerc to stop, retain the lead and win.

But the safety car, virtual or otherwise, was not on Ferrari's side. At the end of lap 31, Bottas closed on Leclerc on the main straight using the DRS and took the lead a few metres into the next lap. Hamilton followed him past on lap 33, then Vettel was let past into Turn 1 on lap 34.

Ferrari, concerned about the life of the softs, tried to extend the stint further but had to bring Leclerc, by now around three seconds off the pace, in.

That returned Leclerc to what had been his de facto position for most of the race of fifth and, given his pace and the number of laps left, eliminated him from podium contention by dropping him to 20s behind Verstappen. This subsequently allowed him to make a late-race stop and nab the point for fastest lap with ease.

Vettel, in third, was looking livelier on the mediums than he had on the softs in the first stint. He was always within five seconds of Hamilton during the second stint and had closed to 3.1s behind when the VSC was activated when the leaders had just started lap 40.

Had Verstappen got ahead he had the pace to stay there, so victory wasn't impossible

This was thanks to Gasly, who had surged from a pitlane start (the result of missing the weighbridge on Friday, among other penalties) to run a comfortable sixth, parking up with a driveshaft failure.

This had a significant impact on the race. Hamilton was pressuring Bottas and was 2.161s behind at the end of lap 39 having been even closer than that a few laps earlier. Vettel was also a threat, with the trio covered by just over five seconds.

Behind, Verstappen was flying. At one stage, he had been half a minute behind leader Leclerc, but from lap 16 - the first flying lap of his second stint - to the end of 39, when the VSC was deployed, Verstappen was 0.3s per lap faster than anyone.

Red Bull's impressive pace was backed up by the improving Gasly, who on comparable medium tyres in the first stint and in clear air, was on average 0.179s quicker than Leclerc from laps 12-33.

Had Verstappen not had that Q1 lock-up that forced him to use a second set of softs to advance and limited him to one Q3 run, he might have qualified higher than fourth with the right tow.

While it would be very difficult for a Red Bull to get ahead and stay ahead given the upgraded Honda engine still isn't quite as strong as that of Mercedes and Ferrari, had Verstappen done so and broken away he had the pace to stay there, so victory wasn't impossible.

Just 1.7s behind Vettel, Verstappen appeared to be a real threat only for the VSC to take the wind out of his sails. By the time the race restarted, Verstappen had been told to take it a little easier to avoid the risk of a repeat of Gasly's failure, with the engine also turned down to ensure reliability. The result was a third consecutive fourth place.

The VSC also had a big impact on the lead battle, as Hamilton restarted having slipped to 3.5s behind Bottas.

"That was my fault and something I'll work on," said Hamilton. "There are some things I can fix on the dash to make sure that doesn't happen again."

The race restarted with the leaders midway round lap 41, giving Hamilton just over 10 laps to get ahead of his team-mate.

He chipped away at the gap and was within DRS range for the final three laps. His key chance was always going to be the end of the penultimate lap, where Russell gave Bottas a helping hand.

As Hamilton admitted, it was a combination of small things that conspired to cost him victory - missing out on pole despite having a tow from Bottas and being up on his team-mate before having a wobble in the final real corner, not holding the lead at the start, and losing time under the VSC.

In the grand scheme of things, being part of a quartet of one-two finishes for Mercedes and building a mammoth lead over Ferrari in the championship will make up for much of that disappointment.

But while this latest one-two marked a run of season-starting success unprecedented even for the mighty Mercedes team, it was closer than it looked. That Mercedes prevailed reflects it the fact it has a more consistent car than Ferrari that works across a range of conditions.

The way the Ferrari works, or doesn't work, the tyres is critical. It seems that the switch to thinner-gauge rubber to allow drivers to push more has forced Ferrari, previously gentler on the more high-degradation rubber of the past two seasons, closer to the edge of the window and therefore prone to falling out of it, while pushing Mercedes, previously battling not to overwork the tyres, towards the sweet spot.

But Mercedes is also razor-sharp and battle-hardened operationally, having cast aside the errors that have cost it in the past. The inspired move to head out for the final Q3 runs first, then pull over to the practice start area at pit exit and force the rest - including Vettel - to stream past and avoid giving a tow to the Ferrari driver reflected that.

This was a race that any of the top six could have won given a fair wind, yet again Mercedes emerged on top. Ferrari has a car that, at its peak, can be a little quicker but the team cannot access that performance regularly enough.

As for Red Bull, with improving Honda it's on a trajectory that could allow it to emerge once more as a genuine title threat.

But Azerbaijan was a reminder that, if either of those two pretenders is going to topple Mercedes in 2019 or the years beyond, they must be stronger still.