Mercedes were hoping for safety car in Baku

Mercedes have admitted that they were hoping for a safety car at the weekends Azerbaijan Grand Prix, so they could pit Valtteri Bottas and gain an advantage on race leader Sebastian Vettel.

The Finn drove exceptionally well to preserve his super soft tyres for forty laps, until Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen’s crash brought out the safety car.

Bottas dived into the pits, fitting the ultrasoft tyre and re-joined the circuit in the lead, much to Vettel’s displeasure.

This clever strategy put him in the position to win the race until his gut-wrenching puncture just three laps from the chequered flag.

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director said that a safety car was what Mercedes wanted, to give Bottas the chance of victory

"Absolutely, that was what we were hoping for,” he said. “When Sebastian came in he leaves this window so that he's sufficiently far behind us so that if we stop under a safety car or a VSC, and you get the shorter pit loss, we could actually take the lead of the race.