How the slower Red Bull won in Malaysia

It's funny how luck often plays such a pivotal role in sport. Lewis Hamilton held a firm grip on most of the Malaysian Grand Prix, but came away empty handed through no fault of his own.

Nico Rosberg was in the wars, but somehow emerged unscathed and with an extended championship lead.

And through it all came Daniel Ricciardo, whose first victory of the season was some kind of retribution for the two that got away in Spain and Monaco earlier this year.

If Rosberg goes onto win the Formula 1 World Championship this season, he will probably look back on this race as the moment fortune made a definitive turn in his direction.

After one lap of the Sepang circuit, the championship leader lay 17th, his hopes of a strong result seemingly in tatters, while Mercedes team-mate and chief title rival Hamilton looked set to retake the points lead with a commanding victory.

But that was not what fortune had in store for Hamilton. Instead, after a thrilling afternoon of drama in Malaysia's searing heat, Ricciardo claimed an unlikely victory, his Red Bull team a one-two finish, Rosberg recovered to the podium, while Hamilton was left to rue a victory gone begging to yet another Mercedes engine failure on his car.

The Malaysian Grand Prix was an absorbing tale of twists and turns that looked utterly unlikely to play out in such dramatic fashion after qualifying.

Hamilton was back on form after his struggles in Singapore, scoring a dominant pole position that set him up perfectly to win this race. That was just the tonic he needed after getting so utterly trounced by Rosberg last time out - a restoration of the natural order of things in his own mind no doubt.

Mercedes had comfortably the fastest car around this circuit. Hamilton's advantage over the fastest non-Mercedes car in qualifying, Max Verstappen's Red Bull, was close to six tenths of a second.

The only real concern for Mercedes heading into the race was the start. Five times already this season Hamilton had failed to convert pole position into a lead at the end of the first lap. He botched one as recently as Monza after qualifying easily on pole, but this time he endured no such trouble, pulling cleanly into the lead on the run down to the first corner.

Team-mate Rosberg also made a decent getaway, and jinked around in Hamilton's slipstream, looking for a potential opportunity to steal the lead away.

As Hamilton protected the inside line, Rosberg elected to sweep to the outside for the long first right-hander. What he didn't count on was Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari steaming down the inside of Verstappen after a fast start of his own from fifth on the grid.

Vettel ever so slightly misjudged his braking, locking a wheel over the inside kerb. This unwanted momentum carried the Ferrari a fraction too deep into the corner, where Rosberg had already turned in.

The result was contact, which broke Vettel's left front suspension and turned the second Mercedes around to face on the on-rushing pack. Rosberg thought his race was "all over" as he tumbled down the order.

Hamilton set about capitalising on his team-mate's misfortune, but this was not going to be so straightforward for the reigning three-time world champion.

Red Bull had displayed lightning long-run pace during Friday practice, superior to Mercedes, and sure enough Hamilton couldn't stretch away at will.

He was quicker, but not by much, and Ricciardo and Verstappen lapped quickly enough to hold his attention in the early stages.

Verstappen was getting antsy sat behind his team-mate. He had been the quicker of the two in race simulations on Friday, and fractionally faster in qualifying too. But for being delayed by the first corner incident he would have been the one chasing Hamilton directly.

He made Red Bull aware of his feelings over the radio, but no team orders were forthcoming, so when the virtual safety car reappeared on lap seven after Romain Grosjean's Haas speared into the Turn 15 gravel trap following brake failure, Verstappen rolled his strategic dice.

He dived for the pits under VSC conditions on lap nine of 56, Red Bull fitting another set of soft compound Pirellis to his car. That stop dropped him behind the remaining Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, and he emerged from the pits side by side with the Williams of Valtteri Bottas, which was running a long first stint after starting on the medium compound.

Bottas could have moved ahead of the Red Bull, but was instructed to stay put thanks to the fact Verstappen had exited the pits fractionally ahead of the Williams under VSC conditions.

This put Verstappen out of sync with the other frontrunning cars, but brought him some time on account of his rivals having to drive slowly for part of the lap under VSC.

Driving in clean air behind the top three once that second VSC period ended allowed Verstappen to go on the offensive.

HAMILTON VS VERSTAPPEN AFTER FIRST VSC

The inroads were modest, but Verstappen closed to within 14 seconds of the lead when Hamilton came in for his first pitstop on lap 20.

Raikkonen did likewise, with Ricciardo making his first stop at the end of the following lap. This trio all fitted the hard compound tyre, and Verstappen briefly led the race until diving into the pits for a second time to follow suit at the end of lap 27.

Verstappen emerged third, 2.552 seconds clear of Raikkonen's Ferrari and 6.129s down on Ricciardo, with Hamilton a further 10.702s further up the road.

So midway through the race this looked set to be a fight between Hamilton and Verstappen for the win. Verstappen had a tyre advantage of seven laps over Hamilton, and the possibility to get to the end without stopping again.

Hamilton still had to make a second stop, so needed to pull out enough of advantage to avoid dropping behind Verstappen when he did so.

To still have a shot at winning the race at this stage, Verstappen needed to keep Hamilton within range and also clear Red Bull team-mate Ricciardo.

HAMILTON VS VERSTAPPEN MID-RACE

But in actual fact Hamilton was able to stretch away from Verstappen, pushing the gap out to more than 20s as Verstappen closed onto the back of Ricciardo.

It's debatable whether Red Bull should have instructed Ricciardo to let Verstappen past at this point, to keep the pressure on Hamilton.

Hamilton was stretching away at about half a second per lap while Verstappen was in clean air, but while using older tyres.

Had Ricciardo moved out of Verstappen's way, and Verstappen's time loss to Hamilton stayed consistent, it's unlikely Verstappen would have been within range to jump back ahead of Hamilton when the Mercedes made another stop.

And even if Verstappen had moved ahead, Hamilton would have gained such a tyre advantage over the final part of the race as to render the whole thing meaningless.

With no realistic hope of beating Hamilton, Red Bull felt there was no need to impose team orders on Ricciardo.

"It was clear Max was going to go to the end of the race on the hard tyre," explained Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "With Daniel we were having some discussion - did he think he could get to the end?

"His initial response was yes, so at that point they were fighting each other for track position.

"That was why there was no interference. The instruction was 'you're racing each other, respect each other and give each other space'."

Verstappen's hard tyres were six laps fresher than Ricciardo's, and Verstappen closed to within striking distance at the beginning of lap 39, again complaining over the radio that Ricciardo was holding him up.

Verstappen got a good run in Ricciardo's slipstream climbing the hill towards Turn 4, but Ricciardo covered the inside. Verstappen cut back on the exit and tried to go around the outside of Ricciardo into the fast left-hander at Turn 5.

The two Red Bulls went side by side through Turn 6, and Verstappen also had a look down the inside at the tighter right of Turn 7, but Ricciardo held on.

"I could see Max coming into Turn 4," said Ricciardo of the moment that turned out to be pivotal in deciding which Red Bull driver would ultimately win this race.

"Out of the corner I had a bit of wheelspin and thought he'd probably get me quite easily into 5 - but I just had enough drive to stay on the inside.

"He had the inside at 6, but I held around the outside and fortunately there weren't too many marbles.

"Into 7 we basically tried to outbrake each other. I was on the cleaner line, so could just go a little bit deeper.

"It was cool to race Formula 1 like that, high-speed corners, inches from each other. You're in the heat of battle, you're seeing red, but at the same time you've got to smile."

His smile no doubt got that bit broader when he successfully repelled a DRS attack from Verstappen into Turn 1 at the start of lap 40, in far less dramatic fashion.

This Red Bull squabbling was helping Hamilton build a big enough gap to make a second stop without losing the lead, but then his luck abandoned him in a fiery cloud of Mercedes engine smoke, as he accelerated towards Turn 1 at the start of lap 41.

Mercedes had no prior warning the engine was about to fail, no drop in oil pressure or gradual loss of power, just a sudden and unexpected catastrophic failure.

What's worse is that this was a brand new engine, one of three tactically 'pooled' for Hamilton at Spa, employed for the first time this weekend.

"Verstappen was in my pit window so I was just pushing him out," explained Hamilton. "I think I had done that almost, and then just went onto the straight and lost all power all of a sudden. You could hear that something blew, and that was it, I stopped..."

Hamilton walked dejectedly away from his stricken car, as officials deployed the virtual safety car for a third time while marshals cleared away the charred remains.

Both Red Bulls dived for the pits simultaneously at the end of the lap, the team fitting soft tyres to each car and sending them on their way.

With Hamilton out of the picture, we were left with a straight fight for victory between Ricciardo and Verstappen over the remaining 15 laps.

RICCIARDO VS VERSTAPPEN IN FINAL STINT

Verstappen chased hard, but couldn't quite get within DRS range again.

Ricciardo had the advantage of a brand new set of tyres, on account of progressing through the Q1 segment of qualifying on the medium compound while Verstappen had to do a second run on softs.

Ricciardo gradually edged away over the closing laps to seal an "emotional" victory - his first since the 2014 Belgian GP.

"I knew if I drove a clean last stint, mistake free, I should be able to hold on," explained Ricciardo. "But Max was quick all weekend, so there were no guarantees.

"The last four or five laps I was able to stabilise my pace and keep out of DRS."

Behind this Red Bull one-two, miraculously, came Rosberg's Mercedes.

After surviving that accident with Vettel, Rosberg escaped a second collision with the other Ferrari of Raikkonen while battling for fourth, and then gained a further boost from Hamilton's misfortune.

Rosberg received a 10s penalty for clattering into Raikkonen during their fight, but was able to maintain a big enough lead over the hobbled Ferrari to finish on the podium once the penalty was applied, extending his lead in the title race to 23 points in the process.

"I understand very well how Lewis feels," Rosberg said. "I've been there in 2014 when we were fighting for the championship - I had two major failures and I know it feels horrible.

"I'm sure he feels so gutted, especially when you deserve to win the race and the technology lets go."

Hamilton suggested after the race that a "higher power" might be intervening in his quest to make it three world titles in a row this year.

Certainly he was plain out of luck in Malaysia, and it's starting to feel as though maybe Hamilton will need a miracle to deny Rosberg this championship.