Why the US GP was F1 at its best

Compared to the nailbiting nature of his first two Formula 1 world championship victories, Lewis Hamilton has enjoyed a relative cruise to his third, but he had to really fight to seal this one in a United States Grand Prix that was breathless, fraught, full of unexpected twists and turns, and a real gloves off battle from start to finish.

It highlighted everything that can be so brilliant about F1 in the right circumstances: close racing all the way through the field, drivers displaying their skills and pushing each other to the limits, unpredictable conditions and strategies.

After a race this good, one wonders if F1 should just do away with Friday and Saturday and become a single-day event...

The atrocious weather that ruined Friday and Saturday, and therefore forced qualifying and the race to run on the same day, was key to creating arguably the best grand prix so far in 2015.

With a shortened qualifying session taking place in extreme wet conditions, and only a few hours between that and the start of the race itself, the teams faced enormous difficulty working out the correct approach to set-up and strategy.

Many people long for simpler times in F1 - less data, less analysis, less simulation. This will not be popular with engineers, but when F1 cannot be methodically planned and pre-calculated it becomes more challenging and more exciting.

Nature ultimately trumped science in the 2015 US Grand Prix, and it was beautiful to behold.

MERCEDES UNDER ATTACK

Red Bull fighting Mercedes for victory was a novelty for 2015 © XPB

Arguably the most thrilling aspect of the race was seeing the two Mercedes embroiled in a genuine race at the front.

Sure they've been beaten occasionally over the past two seasons, but usually only when they've suffered reliability problems or made operational or strategic errors, so wheel-to-wheel action between their cars and rivals has been rare.

Here both Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg were engaged in a proper race from the off. Red Bull has complained vociferously about the disparity in engine performance across the grid since the V6 hybrid turbos were introduced, but the wet weather at the start of this race nullified the disadvantage of the Renault engine to an extent, while the RB11 also seemed able to work the intermediate tyres a bit better than the W06.

Once the two Mercedes came together at the first corner - poleman Rosberg dropping to fourth after getting forced wide - Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo were able to close down early leader Hamilton, having swapped places when the Russian nipped ahead through the esses on lap one.

A virtual safety car deployed while marshals cleared debris from a chaotic first lap forced the red and blue attack dogs to call off their charge momentarily, and Rosberg closed up to the two Red Bulls during the three laps spent under VSC conditions. He repassed both in one lap as the VSC period ended on lap eight, driving around the outside of Ricciardo at Turn 3 then using his superior Mercedes power to pass Kvyat into Turn 12.

Ricciardo complained over team radio, unsure whether Rosberg had passed him illegally.

Ricciardo and Hamilton scrapped on intermediates and slicks © XPB

"VSC, you should keep the gap, and Rosberg wasn't right up our arse," explained Ricciardo. "He was a few seconds behind, so when I saw him close on us under virtual safety car, I was thinking, 'alright, surely he'll back off again', and then he passed me, and then it was green flag, apparently.

"I don't know what happened there. I think we're going to talk about the virtual safety car in general, because it wasn't clear when it was green.

"Today it was more confusing than it has been in previous races. Normally we get a message saying 'VSC ending' and a 10-second warning. But there was no warning at all [Ed - a message did appear on TV screens].

"I don't know if Rosberg just caught all of us out, but I was more confused how he was so close to us."

No matter. Red Bull had enough pace at this stage to recover. Kvyat dived down the inside of Rosberg at the last corner on lap 12, but ran wide and fell back to fourth. Rosberg then immediately ran wide at Turn 1, allowing Ricciardo through into second.

Ricciardo tore after Hamilton and took the lead with a beautifully committed drifting pass around the inside of the long, fast double right-hander of Turns 17 and 18, after getting a much better launch out of 16 than Hamilton.

This battling created a superb spectacle, and for the first 18 laps it looked as though Red Bull might be able to break its victory duck in 2015.

But the track was drying out, and once the leading runners pitted for slick tyres (Hamilton first on lap 18, struggling for rear grip, the others a lap later) the game was effectively up.

GLOVES OFF FIGHTING

Red Bull's day went downhill and Kvyat eventually crashed © XPB

The Mercedes seems much better at working dry tyres in cold conditions on 'green' circuits, and both Red Bulls were overhauled and passed easily once the slick-tyred phase of the race began. Rosberg took the lead back from Ricciardo on lap 22, and by lap 26 the Mercedes were one-two again.

"The longer the inters running went, the more I felt like I was quicker than the guys around me, and once I got Nico and Dany within a few corners, I was like, 'OK, I think I can get Lewis'," said Ricciardo, whose seven-lap cameo in the lead was the first by a Red Bull this season.

"We were rapid, and I was hoping for some rain to keep the track wet, because I thought we would still be quick enough, but then we were nowhere [in the dry].

"We struggled a lot with warm-up to get the [slick] tyres in, which didn't help the brakes come in, so we suffered a lot on braking. In the end that was our biggest problem, but as a result of struggling to get any heat into the tyres."

Ricciardo reckoned Red Bull went for a "65/35" set-up compromise in favour of wet running, which probably hurt the RB11 significantly when the track dried out. But the bigger problem was tyre temperature, as is so often the case in the Pirelli era.

The lap after Hamilton passed Ricciardo for second, Marcus Ericsson's Sauber broke down on the back straight following an electrical failure. Five laps spent rolling around behind the safety car undid both Red Bulls.

Following the restart on lap 33, Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari (up from 13th on the grid) made short work of passing both Kvyat and Ricciardo, before Kvyat then lost fifth place to Max Verstappen's Toro Rosso and sixth (thanks to a brief 'off' at Turn 12) to Nico Hulkenberg's Force India.

These difficulties with locking brakes and cold tyres plunged the Red Bulls into a ferocious pack fight that dominated much of the rest of the afternoon's action.

Feisty Verstappen aggressively battles past the Ferraris © XPB

We earlier saw Verstappen racing aggressively with the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel, the teenager irking Raikkonen by squeezing the Finn right out over the outside kerb on the approach to Turn 12 as they raced side-by-side.

Raikkonen refused to criticise the teenager later, pointing instead to a lack of consistency in the rules concerning wheel-to-wheel battling. The Finn conceded there was only the slightest amount of contact, so Verstappen's judgement - however questionable ethically - was close to perfect.

At one stage the Dutchman also pulled a pass on Vettel, then became embroiled in a scrap with the struggling Red Bulls and Hulkenberg's Force India.

During this middle portion of the race cars were passing and repassing each other, there was a collision between Hulkenberg and Ricciardo as they battled, later there was more wheel-to-wheel tango involving Carlos Sainz Jr, fights between a Red Bull, McLaren, Force India and Toro Rosso, cars swapping places, locking brakes, being driven on the edge, as drivers struggled to keep control on a still-slippery track. Some (Raikkonen and Kvyat) even crashed out.

It was breathless, and just what you want to see in F1. Out front the action was fairly tasty too, and even though the battle for victory ultimately boiled down to another all-Mercedes show, this one also had some real fire to it.

ROSBERG VERSUS HAMILTON

Hamilton's method of taking the lead at the start left Rosberg unimpressed © LAT

Rosberg has come in for criticism for being a 'soft touch' in battle at times in his career, and he has always come off second best when he and Hamilton have started going wheel-to-wheel for the championship over the past two seasons.

Rosberg has seemed to struggle more since he and Hamilton collided while disputing the lead of the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa last year, after which Mercedes severely reprimanded Rosberg for driving into this team-mate.

Hamilton has seemingly seized on the self-doubt this sort of situation can often create in a rival. We got a glimpse of this in Japan, where he was able to snatch the lead from Rosberg at Turn 2 after the start, and ease his team-mate off the track in the process, almost daring his rival to risk a collision.

After making a superior getaway from second on the Austin grid, Hamilton sent his Mercedes up the inside of Rosberg's at Turn 1 on the opening lap.

Hamilton didn't visibly lock his brakes, but he went very deep into the corner and the two silver cars banged wheels as Hamilton ran wide and again forced Rosberg off the circuit, dropping him temporarily down to fifth.

"He was trying to drive me off the track, but I wasn't moving because I have the right to the track there," explained Rosberg.

"I was in front mid-corner, that's the crucial thing. If I'm in front then I have a right to the track.

"So he drove into me, and that's definitely one step too far."

Rosberg wasn't in a celebratory mood on the podium © XPB

Unsurprisingly, Hamilton saw things differently.

"It wasn't intentional," he countered. "We both braked very deep into it and I understood he was on the outside, and in the wet that's where the grip is.

"He was turning and I wasn't, so we touched. I would never intentionally do something like that to my team-mate."

Final word to team boss and chief mediator Toto Wolff: "It was a very hard incident. In fairness, one must say that it was wet and therefore the car was hard to control, but definitely it was too hard on Lewis's side.

"The manoeuvre itself was not pleasant for the team."

One wonders if that means Hamilton will have to answer for his actions at a later date, once the celebrations have died down, but regardless of the rights and wrongs it was good to see these two go at each other hard, racing instincts not dulled by responsibilities to corporate image. Proper racing!

To his enormous credit, Rosberg was not undone by this incident, and set about his recovery with zeal. He made a committed pass stick on Hamilton at Turn 13 for second place just before the first round of pitstops (the first time he has done this over the past two seasons), and seemingly pulled a masterstroke later in the race by pitting under the virtual safety car (deployed after Ricciardo and Hulkenberg collided).

Hamilton stayed out, and was rightly concerned this would leave him vulnerable if he couldn't make it to the end without stopping again.

When Kvyat crashed his Red Bull exiting the penultimate corner on lap 42, the real safety car was called for and Hamilton dived for the pits. This dropped him back behind his team-mate, who now looked odds-on to win the race and delay Hamilton's coronation for at least one more round.

Rosberg still looked good for victory until a mistake © LAT

But it wasn't to be. Rosberg undid all his good work with a mistake exiting Turn 16 on lap 48 of 56.

A vicious kick of oversteer carried him offline and then wide onto the damp run-off at Turn 17, which allowed Hamilton to sweep easily back into the lead.

"For now I'm assuming it was a mistake I made carrying too much wheelspin, but it's something I want to look into," explained Rosberg, who nevertheless had displayed the sort of fight he will need to summon more often if he is to topple Hamilton in future.

"The tyres weren't up to temperature, but it felt very strange. It's never happened to me before. It was really, really tough to lose the lead like that, because I was feeling really good."

Hamilton was therefore handed his 10th grand prix victory of the season, which allowed him to clinch the 2015 world championship with three races to spare.

It was a relatively comfortable title triumph in the grand scheme of things, but achieved with a combative drive in a superb race, fulfilling his life's ambition of matching the late Ayrton Senna by becoming a triple champion of F1.

"Emotions were up and down through the race, because at one point I was in the lead but knew I didn't have it in the car," explained Hamilton, who said he'd almost lost control at the same point on the track as Rosberg. "I was struggling and sliding all over the place.

"I just can't believe it. Honestly, I really, really can't believe. What an extraordinary race."

It really was. If only they could all be as good as this one.