Perhaps it was inevitable that Lewis Hamilton would finally prove fallible at some point this season and in qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix the very tiniest chink in his armour was revealed. In the grand scheme of the championship battle, though, he goes into the race barely inconvenienced. He was second to the pole position of his Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, while, crucially, his title rival Sebastian Vettel was off the pace in third.

Bottas’s two hot runs in Q3 to claim pole were superlative. The Sochi Autodrom suits his driving style, especially on maximising the exit from the medium-speed corners that dominate here. He scored his debut F1 win last season in Russia, where he has never been out-qualified by a teammate.

With the Mercedes proving exceptionally strong, Bottas pulled it all together when it counted. His first quick run was four-thousandths faster than Hamilton, who knew he had to improve. It was Bottas however who upped the ante with a track record of 1min 31.387sec. Hamilton responded and was three-tenths up in the first sector when he went wide at turn seven and abandoned his lap, leaving the Finn triumphant.

“It’s a good feeling,” he said. “This has been a pretty good track for me and again I managed to get some good laps in qualifying and the car just felt really, really strong.”

Hamilton had been quickest in the first two sessions of qualifying but admitted he had been struggling all weekend with the middle sector. He had to find more there and was honest in conceding he had gone just over the edge.

“The middle sector was where I was slacking, as I’d call it,” he said. “I knew I had to push, so it wasn’t three-tenths it was half a second I needed to improve and so just over-egged it a little bit.”

Hamilton leads Vettel by 40 points in the world championship and the onus is very much on the latter to win this race but the Scuderia have been found wanting. Mercedes, however, have gone from strength to strength in Sochi. Both teams brought aero upgrades here but Vettel still could not challenge. He ended half a second down on Bottas, an eternity on a track where the frontrunners will all run the same one-stop strategy.

The German said it was the best Ferrari could achieve. He was on pole last year but was beaten through turn two by Bottas starting from third and his best hope on Sunday is to return the favour on the opening lap after which overtaking is going to be very difficult.

Should both Mercedes make a clean getaway, the team will have to address whether to maximise the damage to Vettel by instructing Bottas to cede his place to Hamilton. The incentive to do so is strong. A Hamilton win to a third for Vettel would yield a 10-point gain as opposed to the three points second and third would deliver.

For the moment Bottas, still looking for his first win of the season, wants to convert pole. “My approach is definitely just trying to win the race,” he said. “You can’t have any other goal, starting from the pole, but of course we’re here as a team.”

The team principal, Toto Wolff, said that team orders were under consideration. “It’s going to be difficult to tell him you are not allowed to race after getting it on pole,” he said. “We will have a conversation tomorrow morning and then see how the race is going to pan out.”

Kimi Raikkonen was in fourth. The Force India’s of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Pérez were in sixth and eighth, Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean finished in fifth and ninth for Haas, with the Saubers of Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson in seventh and 10th.

Both Red Bull’s had taken new power units and starting from the back of the grid the team opted to save their tyres, not taking part in Q2, with Max Verstappen in 11th and Daniel Ricciardo in 12th. Alongside Ricciardo and Verstappen, Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly, and McLaren’s Fernando Alonso all received grid penalties for multiple power unit replacements. They will start from the back of the grid in the order they were taken: Alonso in front of Ricciardo, Verstappen, Gasly and Hartley.