Hamilton described the situation he was in after qualifying second following a troubled two days in Baku as "a bit overwhelming". Starting the race at the front when for much of the weekend he and the team had not even been in the top 10, he said, was "one of the greatest feelings".
How did they do it? By what team boss Toto Wolff said was "a really thorough engineering programme and we were not shy of trying extreme things, which were as extreme as we [have ever] experienced".
The car simply lacked grip, and the drivers and team were in a quandary as to what to do about it. It was only towards the end of that final hour that Mercedes finally got the car "in a decent place", as Wolff put it.
"It didn't feel too bad in first practice but second and third practice were pretty much a disaster," Hamilton said. "We did some changes overnight which didn't rectify it. We tried a few different things in P3 and then tried something right at the end and it unlocked the set-up.
"We hadn't been able to get the tyres to switch on like the other cars and the difference was all of sudden the tyres started working and we were back in the game.
"It was the biggest jump we have [ever] been able to make between P3 and qualifying, for sure. It was literally night and day, the car."
Having made the decisive set-up change for the final run in final practice, when Hamilton was third fastest, a position assisted by a slipstream that the team said was worth 0.6secs, they continued down that path for qualifying.
"I had a lot of anxiety," Hamilton said, "because you don't know whether you are going to get it right or wrong.
"Eventually, you just have to let it go. We were here last night until 11 o'clock and then 10 minutes before the session we were still making small changes and you just have to shake it off and go all out."
Team-mate Bottas did not fare so well. The two Mercedes have different set-ups, with Hamilton running lower downforce than the Finn, but Wolff said that was not an explanation for the fact that Bottas was 1.2secs slower and down in 10th place.
"[In the race, the wing level] might have an effect," Wolff said, "but the difference was the car was very tricky and Lewis found the confidence and Valtteri didn't."
