The Malaysian GP was always going to be one of the more intriguing races of the 2016 season, given the long run pace shown by Red Bull and Ferrari on the newly resurfaced track in practice.

However, even in his wildest dreams Christian Horner would not have predicted that his team would emerge from the weekend with a spectacular one-two finish, leaving Mercedes nursing its wounds.

Rewinding a bit, an intriguing comment from Toto Wolff on Saturday evening suggested that the race might not be so straightforward for the World Champions.

"I think it's open, because the pace on the long runs was not as different," said the Mercedes boss. "We know with the current generation of cars and the heat tomorrow it's going to be an exercise in how you make the car, its systems, the tyres, the engine and everything survive best. I don't think it will be flat out for one and a half hours. Anything is possible. Obviously the start plays a big role..."

Turn 1 plays its part

Not the first time this season a Grand Prix was turned on its head by a first lap collision. This one didn't affect pole man Lewis Hamilton, but it did send Nico Rosberg to the back of the field, and put Sebastian Vettel – who would surely have been a major player on Sunday had he got past Turn 1 – out of the race.

Rosberg's misfortune gave the Mercedes pit wall plenty to think about in the opening minutes of the race."The initial reaction is, 'Oh no!,'", Paddy Lowe told Motorsport.com. "And the next one is, 'Is the car damaged?' It took us a lap or two to really understand if there were any issues with his car, which fortunately was under VSC.

"Miraculously it seemed to be completely undamaged from the incident. So then you're just into, 'what's the strategy to get him back to the front?' The pace of the car was very strong today, so we were able to deploy that with both drivers."

Meanwhile Vettel's departure left Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen as the men well set to challenge Hamilton, and it gave the Milton Keynes a strategic advantage. Crucially RBR now had two cars shadowing the solitary Mercedes up front, and that meant the team could do different things with each car and try to wrong foot its rival.

"This was always the problem," said Lowe. "Actually my first thought, having dropped Nico out, was this really put our win at risk, because this is a race where a number of different strategies work, and it's also very difficult to overtake. And therefore what you don't want is one versus two, even with a quicker car. They can play some games which you can't respond to – which indeed they did."

Verstappen makes his move

Sure enough when the VSC came out after Romain Grosjean's brake failure on the ninth lap the third placed Verstappen peeled into the pits and changed to a fresh set of soft tyres, with the stop costing less than it would have done under green flag conditions,

"At the first Virtual Safety Car we decided to roll the dice with the tail car," said Horner. "Which was obviously Verstappen. So we took the stop with him, as he was the second car, and it was more of a risk. But later in the race it looked like it was coming good for him."

"The best race plan was to stay out," said Lowe. "But Red Bull did exactly what we would have done in that situation which was to take a punt with the other car, the second placed car, which of course gave us things to worry about."

Mercedes did however use the VSC to pit Rosberg (who had made it to 11th) and give him fresh rubber, while Force India and McLaren each stacked both their cars. It was another sign that increasingly the VSC is being used to strategic advantage.

The next phase of the race was fascinating, and for a while Verstappen really put Mercedes under pressure. He was only 16s behind Hamilton, but with fresher tyres and in effect a stop in hand, and over the stint that gap came down to 14s.

Hamilton then came in and pitted for hards on Lap 20, leaving Ricciardo to lead a lap before he too went to hards. Both men could in theory get to the end, having used the compulsory hard, and while that initially seemed unlikely the mere possibility was enough to give both teams something to think about.

"It was possible, but it wouldn't be a very quick way to the end," said Lowe. "We wondered whether Ricciardo was trying to do that, in fact. Whether that was his true pace or he was managing the pace in order to make that work, is sort of immaterial, because it meant he was doing a pace that we could easily beat with another stop. Actually it was Verstappen who was the threat, not Ricciardo, irrespective of whether he went to the end or not."

After Hamilton stopped for hards Verstappen, on the softs, stayed around 6s ahead. This was a critical stage, as Hamilton showed that he had the pace with which to keep Verstappen in check. Verstappen then pitted for hards on Lap 27, crucially getting out ahead of Kimi Raikkonen. He was now behind Ricciardo, and catching with his fresher tyres.

Hamilton hits his marks…

Back in the lead, Hamilton continued to bang in the laps that he needed to do to stay safe, and he was given encouragement from the pit wall: "These are great lap times, just keep your head down, you're doing a great job." By now it was clear to Mercedes that he had seen off the threat from Verstappen.

"Until you see the pace then obviously you're going to worry about the unknown," said Lowe. "But as soon as you could see the pace with the different cars you could see that our strategy was going fine, and Lewis was putting in some terrific laps, very consistent, very fast, but at the same time, keeping his tyres in good shape.

"He was almost constantly quicker than Verstappen both on the end of his soft stint and on the beginning of his hard stint, when Lewis had older hard tyres than Verstappen, but was still considerably faster. That made it such a compounded shock when he lost the engine, because Lewis had driven a terrific weekend. He was well on track to take a final stop onto the softs ahead of Verstappen."

…and then it all changes

The lap before the sudden failure Hamilton crossed the line 22.7s clear of Ricciardo, with 16 laps still to run. As Lowe says, the plan was to put him on softs for a final run to the flag as soon as he had a big enough margin to stop without losing the lead, but he never quite got that far.

"In my opinion it's been his strongest weekend all year," said Lowe. "Not just in the race but in terms of all of the homework, all of the long run preparation. Then his actual qualifying he was stunningly fast, and then a tremendous performance in the race. One of those cruel twists of fate, the guy that absolutely deserved that win had it taken away from him."

Hamilton's retirement put an even sharper focus on the battle between Ricciardo and Verstappen, which had become more intense once Verstappen caught his team mate and very nearly got by. His hard tyres were six laps younger, and that in theory gave him an advantage.

"At this point it was clear that Max was going to go to the end of the race on the hard tyre," said Horner. "With Daniel we had stopped on Lap 21, and we were having some discussion with him about whether he felt he could get to the end. His initial response around 6-7 laps in was yes he thought he could.

"At that point they are fighting each other for track position. That was why there was no interference, and the instruction was you are racing each other, just respect each other, which is what we talked about this morning, and give each other space. Some great wheel-to-wheel racing between the two of them, but at all times they respected all the hundreds of employees they represent."

VSC helps Ricciardo

With Hamilton out, the stakes were raised even further. However, the VSC that Hamilton triggered also changed the balance of power when both Red Bulls pitted on Lap 41.

"It would have been marginal with the tyres until the end of the race," Horner explained. "So we thought we would double stop, we have the time to be able to do that, and then it is a straight race between the two of them. And to ensure that we didn't run into any tyre problems, as we were looking for the tyres to go for a very long way if we had stayed out."

Not only did Verstappen give up the advantage he had enjoyed with his slightly younger tyres, Ricciardo happened to have a brand new set of softs left, while Verstappen had to make do with a set he'd run in qualifying. So now the advantaged tipped back towards the Australian.

"The second Safety Car came out and that basically neutralised them," said Horner. "We just told the drivers they were free to race, but keep it clean. Both race engineers were instructed, even after the last pitstop, but 43 points is essential. They raced very fairly and very cleanly with each other."

In fact they were never as close after the last stops as they had been just before. Max made it to within 1.1s with seven laps to go, but then the gap drifted out once more, and it was clear that Ricciardo had it under control.

"Daniel had a slight advantage that he had a brand new set of tyres rather than an installed set from qualifying yesterday," said Horner.

"But the main aspect was having track position compared to being the track in dirty air, it was always going to be a slight advantage. Max obviously started to run out of tyres slightly before Daniel towards the end of the race."

So a well deserved win for Ricciardo after some frustration over the past two years, and a great team performance from Red Bull.

As has been the case in all Mercedes defeats over the past three seasons, by both RBR and Ferrari, you had to be there to take advantage. In this case the winners had put genuine pressure on the world champion.

Horner certainly felt that played a role: "I think the fact that we pushed them so hard and they were pushing to try and clear Daniel and Verstappen, that was probably a contributing reason for their engine failure.

"Things tend to balance out over a year. Daniel got unlucky in Monaco, things didn't work out in Barcelona, but it all came right today. It's swings and roundabouts."

Spare a though too for Rosberg, who did a great job to come through from last to third, even overcoming the 10 second penalty he received for his opportunistic pass on Raikkonen, a moment that really demonstrated that he is prepared to fight hard, and take risk, as he battles for the title.

"He put in some great laps when he needed to, made the tyres work for him, and some great overtakes," said Lowe.

"Obviously it's controversial, but the overtake on Kimi did look pretty impressive to me. Albeit not so much to the stewards..."