How one Mercedes driver handed another victory

"Right, let's get a gap to him then stroke it to the end," Max Verstappen was told over the radio after he'd passed Lewis Hamilton to take command of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

He'd done the hard work to climb from fifth on the grid, there were no more pitstops to make, and Hamilton's Mercedes team was focused more on getting him to the end amid engine problems than fighting back. The race was won.

Verstappen's lead over Hamilton crept up to 2.8 seconds by the start of lap 44 of 71, four laps after the pass, but having been told "we don't need any pace" there was no need to pull away any more dramatically than that.

Hamilton was no threat, but there was another Mercedes driver who posed a problem - Esteban Ocon. The Racing Point Force India attempted to go around the outside of Verstappen into Turn 1, hung onto what became the inside line for Turn 2 and clattered into the Red Bull when it took the apex.

Hamilton saw this unfold and charged between the two stricken cars to take a lead he would never lose. While Verstappen rejoined second and closed back up on Hamilton in a car with significant damage to the right side of the floor, he never got close enough to attack. Ocon had swung the race decisively in favour of his overall employer.

Any suggestion this was a deliberate act, to buy into the conspiracy theory that Ocon made himself into a missile to help to Mercedes, is categorically nonsense. Ocon was certainly guilty of bad judgement, but it was not a malicious or calculated move, and certainly wasn't orchestrated by his employer or done unilaterally in search of a works team job as some wild theories posit. It was simply a confluence of circumstances that set the pair on a collision course.

"The rules say you are allowed to unlap yourself if you are faster, and that is what I did because I had massive pace" Esteban Ocon

With Verstappen on a set of softs that would run to the end of the race and Hamilton no threat, there was no need for Verstappen to attack. The problem was that Ocon had made his pitstop on lap 40 and was eager to make progress on his fresh supersofts.

On both lap 41 and 42, he was the fastest driver on track, on average 0.240 seconds quicker than Verstappen. A lap down, the Force India pitwall advised Ocon he could unlap himself should he want to. With Carlos Sainz Jr's Renault 25s up the road in 13th, Ocon decided he needed to crack on.

"The first lap I was a lot faster and the second lap I was a lot faster," said Ocon. "I had fresh tyres basically and the rules say you are allowed to unlap yourself if you are faster, and that is what I did on the second lap because I had massive pace.

"I went around the outside of him, the same move I did on Fernando [Alonso], the same move I did on many other drivers, coming from last on the first lap. But it didn't happen the same way in the corner after that."

Verstappen was furious. The subsequent shoving match with Ocon at the post-race driver weigh-in was proof of that.

"You do everything well, you go through the field, we had a great car, and then by such an idiot you get taken out while he is being lapped," was Verstappen's summary.

Ocon was hit with a 10s stop/go penalty, and was certainly at fault for the collision. While he's absolutely right that it is acceptable to unlap yourself and it's entirely understandable that he wanted to get on with his race having endured the pain of a long first stint on softs, it has to be a clear-cut move.

Given he could have slotted in right behind Verstappen once it was clear it wasn't going to work, then picked up the DRS again on the run to the Descida do Lago, it wasn't the percentage play. True, Verstappen could have given Ocon a wider berth and let him go, but that would have been ultra-conservative. With Hamilton only a few seconds behind, and Red Bull only partially aware of the extent of his engine problem, why should Verstappen yield?

Now just under six seconds behind, with a car that had lost downforce but that was at least still relatively well-balanced, Verstappen still had a chance to trouble Hamilton.

"You know all the cutouts that you have on the side of the floor, that whole area [was damaged]," said Verstappen, indicating an area 15-20cm wide. "That was completely gone so it was pretty bad. I lost a lot of downforce and I had to lock a lot of tools on the steering wheel but that was not enough. Still the car was quick, but we could have been much faster."

Verstappen attempted to regroup and inched towards Hamilton, saving his best for the closing laps. With five laps remaining, he got the gap below two seconds, then down to around 1.5s - but there it stayed. When Hamilton nailed a strong middle sector on the penultimate lap, Verstappen knew it was game over.

His fury was entirely understandable, for up until the clash with Ocon this was a superbly executed race.

From fifth on the grid, Verstappen briefly jumped Kimi Raikkonen before making a move stick by going around the outside of the Ferrari into the Senna S on lap three.

Next time round, he ambushed Sebastian Vettel with a late move up the inside into the same corner. Taking a load of inside kerb, Verstappen forced Vettel wide - but not too wide - to move into third. With both Ferraris on the softs, Verstappen was enjoying the advantage of more grip at this stage.

His next victim was Valtteri Bottas, who started third in the second Mercedes and went around the outside of a locked-up Vettel into the first corner at the start.

But Bottas was struggling more to keep the rear tyres under control than Hamilton and was vulnerable. On lap eight, he was warned that he was running out of battery energy and needed to be careful how much he used in battle, and sure enough Verstappen challenged him at the start of lap 10.

Bottas was told to defend to the inside, which he did initially before inching back to the right and leaving the door open for Verstappen. While the Red Bull driver was going to get past anyway, it was not the first moment of softness in battle from the Finn.

With Hamilton less than two seconds up the road at this point, Verstappen clearly had the speed to lap faster but he could not make a move. Hamilton was doing a good job of keeping the rear overheating under control, something that became a little easier once more of the compound had worn away and therefore the tyres lost heat quicker, so Verstappen had to bide his time. This is where one of the key traits of the Red Bull came to the fore - tyre management.

The RB14 has probably been the best of the three big teams on its tyres this year thanks to a combination of its inherent good balance and the team's excellence in mastering the black art of getting the best of the Pirellis. So Verstappen was able to extend his stint far beyond the moment Hamilton pitted at the end of lap 19.

Hamilton emerged 18s down, with Mercedes wanting him to keep Verstappen within 20.5s to be certain of regaining track position when the Red Bull stopped.

During this phase of the race, Hamilton was singularly unimpressed by the grip offered by the mediums he had taken on and battling to manage the rear temperatures. Having been asked to match Verstappen's pace, Hamilton expressed frustration that he hadn't been warned how close Verstappen was to busting his pit window.

When he was told his margin was down to just 0.8s at the end of lap 27, he asked "when were you going to tell me this?", then was given a more aggressive engine mode to respond with. He did so, and while Verstappen at one stage got within a few tenths of pulling a big enough gap, his right-rear Pirelli gave out.

So when Verstappen finally dived into the pits at the end of lap 35, he emerged with a deficit of around three seconds. Towards the end of lap 38, Verstappen was allowed an attacking engine mode and breezed past Hamilton on the run to Turn 1 with the help of the DRS. The race was won.

"They said: 'We have a massive problem on the power unit, it's going to fail on the next lap'" Toto Wolff

With Hamilton being told "we've had to turn the engine down to protect it" amid earlier chatter about not wanting to lose an engine, and with tyre troubles, there was no chance of a response. Just stroke it home, Max.

Ocon's intervention a few laps later turned the race on its head and Hamilton gratefully claimed his 10th victory of the season. It wasn't one of his most emphatic wins, but Hamilton was able to manage the tyres better than team-mate Bottas and kept Verstappen at bay once back ahead.

It was a fitting way for Mercedes to clinch a remarkable fifth consecutive constructors' championship, especially after high temperatures manifested themselves and threatened a failure while in battle with Verstappen. As is often the case, the team rose to the challenge and managed to get the situation under control.

"We have the engine guys here in the back and at base," said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "We have about 10 channels open [on the radio]. On one channel what I could hear is: 'Lewis Hamilton, engine failure imminent. It's going to fail within the next lap'.

"I just said, 'Excuse me, what?' They said: 'Yes. We have a massive problem on the power unit, it's going to fail on the next lap'. But it didn't fail the next lap.

"I said, 'I'll let you work, but when you have a minute, tell me what's happening'. They said, 'Our exhaust is about to fail. We're overshooting all the temperature limits.'

"I said 'what's the fix?' They started to fix it by turning the whole thing down. The temperatures went down to below 1000C to 980C. It's still too high! He recovered another lap. That was truly horrible."

But what of the Ferrari challenge? After qualifying, Wolff declared the red team favourite. This was thanks to Ferrari's inspired gamble of calling its drivers in amid the threat of rain after one lap in Q2 to switch from supersofts to softs. While this resulted in Vettel damaging the weighbridge and being reprimanded in his frustration at being called to an FIA check, it meant Vettel and Raikkonen started second and fourth respectively on what should have been a favourable tyre.

Vettel's race never really got going. After losing a place to Bottas, he then ran wide at the Descida do Lago left-hander at the end of the back straight during the first stint and lost third to Kimi Raikkonen.

Having jumped back ahead of Raikkonen thanks to undercutting him, he was then ordered to let the sister car past. Vettel, on mediums, then came under pressure from Daniel Ricciardo, who had charged from 11th on the grid after a five-place drop for a turbocharger change, and was passed for sixth in the second stint.

A sensor problem meant Vettel was having to run the car in unusual engine modes, which also made life difficult under braking. Combined with nobody struggling as much as Ferrari hoped on supersofts, this condemned him to finishing at the back of the six-car battle at the front after making a second stop for supersofts.

With Raikkonen never quite able to threaten the top two despite getting close in the closing stages, Ricciardo came through to fourth having ambushed Bottas into the Senna S with 12 laps to go. Bottas was struggling badly with his medium Pirellis and had no chance of keeping Ricciardo behind, and immediately headed to the pits for fresh softs as he was able to emerge still ahead of Vettel.

Had Ricciardo not had the grid penalty, he undoubtedly would have been on the podium and might have been well placed to come through to victory after the Verstappen/Ocon clash. It's indicative of the way his season has gone since a stellar start that he couldn't.

Verstappen, meanwhile, was left to rue a victory lost. After the race, Hamilton pointed out the risks associated with getting tangled up with a backmarker who has little at stake while you have everything to lose. Perhaps it was the wisdom of a driver who probably would have found a way to evade such a fate.

But given Ocon was the driver who caused the clash, it's hard not to regard Hamilton's comments as a little psychological warfare against a young driver who becomes more formidable by the day.

Unlike mistakes earlier in the season that cost potential victories in China and Monaco, this was not a race lost by Verstappen, rather to misfortune. The 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix is another signpost to a challenge for the title Hamilton must surely one day face from Verstappen.