Nico Rosberg wins in Baku, Force India on podium

Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel came in second with 16.696 second lag, followed by Force India’s Sergio Perez (+25.241).

“I don’t know unfortunately but it’s something that we have to try and understand because it was pretty unbelievable here this weekend how fast our auto was”, Rosberg said when asked where the team’s advantage had come from.

Following his win, Rosberg said: “It has been an incredible day”.

“All weekend I was building towards it and qualifying was really optimum, it felt good”. “The weekend went perfectly”. “It was awesome. No concerns, we went flat out”. However, with Sergio Perez over ten seconds up the road by that point, Hamilton opted to save his engine for the rest of the race.

He had a 10-second lead as he came through to start lap 8 and was 20s up on the chasing pack when he pitted for the first time on lap 21, a stop in which he entered P1 and came out P1.

“The circuit is incredible – you need to be well equipped around here”. “Already by the end of yesterday the vehicle was coming alive. I think people lost a lot of money because they were betting on a safety vehicle – I was expecting a couple too”.

But by that point, the Briton was too far back from Perez and Kimi Raikkonen with a podium spot well out of his reach. The Finn is fourth on 81 points.

However, Hamilton insisted: “There was no way for me to know what was wrong, no matter how much I had studied it”.

“We had a great qualifying, were in P7 [after qualifying second but getting a five-place penalty] and we had to make our way through”.

“I don’t see the benefit”, he said.

Williams’ Valtteri Bottas finished in sixth place ahead of Red Bull duo Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.

Defending three-time champion Hamilton and 2007 champion Raikkonen were upset by their respective Mercedes and Ferrari teams’ radio silences on technical issues.

Mercedes said to him: “There is nothing you are doing wrong, just a setting that is incorrect”.

An increasingly agitated Hamilton was heard urging his engineer over the radio to give him some guidance as to what settings on his steering wheel to change, but the clampdown on pit-to-car communications for 2016 barred the team from telling him.

Asked how it felt in the vehicle during those 12 laps, he said: “Dangerous”. “It was a problem they both had and Nico could fix it quicker than Lewis”. “Because by regulations we’re not allowed to tell the driver, they needed to figure it out themselves”.