Lewis Hamilton opened his 2020 victory account by converting a superlative wet-weather pole into a comfortable win at the Styrian Grand Prix to confirm Mercedes’s place at the head of the field.

Hamilton was absolutely peerless in the saturated qualifying conditions, and though Max Verstappen started alongside him on the front row of the grid, the Red Bull Racing driver never quite had the pace to challenge for the lead, and by the time of his pit stop on lap 24 that his strategy had become defensive rather than progressive.

Off the podium the battle for fourth went down to the wire, with the front of the midfield tightly matched after different strategies brought Racing Point, Renault and McLaren together in the battle for points.

Mercedes may have a new all-black livery, but its superiority over the field remains stubbornly unchanged, as Valtteri Bottas’s dominant pole so aptly illustrated at the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.

Not even a trip through the gravel and a clumsy spin on the grass in his second run could keep Bottas from pole and a new track record with a time of 1 minute 2.939 seconds. It was enough to pip teammate Lewis Hamilton by just 0.012 seconds.

The margin between the quickest Mercedes and the next-best car, Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, was a foreboding 0.538 seconds. The Dutchman said the gap was exacerbated by balance problems aboard his RB16, but even was forced to admit the Mercedes is simply in a different league.