It wasn’t an absolute certainty it would have played out that way. Rosberg had just undercut his way past the second Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen and was within 5s of Seb with two-thirds of the race still to go – and the Mercedes probably was an ultimately faster car than the Ferrari. But its advantage was certainly nowhere near what it had been in qualifying the day before – and with track position king around an Albert Park track on which it’s particularly difficult to overtake, you’d reckon Vettel would probably have had it covered.
But then on the 200mph run down to the turn three braking zone, the race’s complexion changed. Alonso – slipstreaming Gutiërrez’s Haas, Esteban defensively in the middle of the track, Fernando bobbing around on the inside – switched across to the outside at just the moment Esteban was easing that way to take up his line. The gap was no longer there, the McLaren’s right-front hit the Haas left-rear and an aircraft-type accident unfolded with extraordinary violence, the McLaren rebounding into the wall on the left, then rolling as it dug into the gravel trap before rearing into the air once more, ending its flight a crumpled wreck on its side in the wall. Amazingly, Alonso was able to crawl out essentially unharmed, a fantastic testimony to modern safety standards.
The timing of the subsequent red flag, with everyone free to fit new tyres for the restart, formed an awkward strategic Y. There were 39 laps still to go; a set of mediums might have been able to stretch that far but no-one really knew (Friday practice had been rained out), a set of softs probably would not, a set of super-softs certainly wouldn’t. So this new era of three available Pirelli compounds increased the uncertainty. Mercedes felt quite comfortable with its choice of running non-stop on a set of mediums, its confidence enhanced by the massive mileage it conducted on this tyre through Barcelona testing – and the fact that it was a problem-free tyre around here last year. Ferrari’s calculations suggested the total time of that choice versus that of a supersoft/soft combination with a pit stop was actually very similar but there was a reluctance to go with the medium. With the track temperatures already beginning to fall as afternoon turned to early evening, there was a real chance that the tyre wouldn’t have switched on, especially on a Ferrari that still tends to be the first car to suffer with under-temperature fronts. Ferrari therefore felt more comfortable being aggressive and lined Vettel and Räikkönen up for the restart on the super-softs.
