2016 Singapore Grand Prix

But then Mercedes inadvertently put itself under massive pressure by switching its other car, that of Lewis Hamilton, to a three-stop strategy in a last throw of the dice to retake third from Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari. And the race came alive. Hamilton’s stop triggered a domino effect as Ferrari responded to it with Kimi, Red Bull responded to Räikkönen’s – this in turn forcing Mercedes to prepare to bring Rosberg in to defend against Ricciardo from possibly using his new tyres to more than make up the pit stop loss over the old-tyred race leader. But a combination of a stunning out-lap from Ricciardo and Rosberg hitting traffic on what was going to be his in-lap forced Mercedes to leave him out, for to have pitted was certain to have lost them the lead and probably the victory.

So instead the last 14 laps played out with a rousing chase, Ricciardo on barely used super-softs hunting down Rosberg on much older and harder compound tyres; tension and thrill interspersed, each marshalling their finite resources differently, trying to judge how much and when to give out, when to conserve, Mercedes accepting Rosberg was going to be caught but guiding him, particularly in the usage of his very marginal brakes.