Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff explains the different set-up of their driver Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, resulting in two different speeds on their qualifying performance.

Hamilton was P2 behind the pole sitter Charles Leclerc, as the reigning world champion managed to find form in his Mercedes following struggling right through Azerbaijan’s practice sessions. Teammate Bottas could only made 10th fastest, but didn’t get Q3 final qualifying lap due to the fourth red flag.

“So we have a rule at the beginning of the season,” Wolff explained to Sky Sports F1 when asked about the apparent tow.

“Any driver can decide whether he wants to go first or second, this weekend this was Lewis’ call. And he decided to go second. Nothing surprising.”

“We were just experimenting in FP3,” he said, “and I must really say that the job that has been done back in Brackley and in Brixworth and then the engineers here really designing a program which we went through line by line by line, some experiments useful, others not. And at the end, we had so many more answers to our questions and then a car that was good.

“It’s all interlinked, there is not one single thing, it’s about the aero balance, deciding about the right amount of downforce, temperatures in the tyre, and then obviously the balance.”

“We debated it and we have a lower downforce configuration and the higher one. Valtteri opted for the higher downforce configuration and Lewis for the lower but there’s not a lot in it.”

Hamilton described the improvement as “one of the greatest feelings”, given that his W12 “has not been happy all weekend”.

“It’s been a bit of a disaster. To be up there, and even Valtteri [Bottas] getting into the top 10, that’s a massive leap and that’s just really down to great teamwork”.

“It was really just about getting the tyres to work. We couldn’t get the tyres to switch on like the others can. The ‘night and day’ difference was feeling the tyres working,” he explained.