Incredible performance Hamilton: 'That hardly should have made it feasible'

The journalist from The Race stressed that beforehand it looked like both cars would be about the same strength. "It was a quite extraordinary performance, one which he described as maybe my best. He had a super-fast Mercedes and Red Bull was struggling more than usual, but that hardly should have made it feasible to do what he did."

Better performance by Mercedes

Partly due to Hamilton's new combustion engine, Mercedes managed to make a difference on the straights in Brazil. This was already visible during free practice, qualifying and the sprint race and continued into the race.

"The expectation was it would be pretty evenly matched between them here, with the Red Bull’s downforce giving it the advantage in sector 2 and the Mercedes’ low drag in sectors 1 and 3, and the time spent in 1 and 3 combined being around the same as that in 2. But a couple of things unbalanced those scales: Hamilton’s new power unit and the Red Bull’s front end limitation in how it was using its tyres."