Mercedes will be approaching this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix in a cautiously optimistic frame of mind. Away from the low-drag/high-power demands of Spa and Monza, the Ferrari threat looks set to fade. But in its place, probably, will be a renewed challenge from Red Bull, taking up from where they left off in Hungary before the outlier tracks in Belgium and Italy. Essentially, the performance profile of the Red Bull and Mercedes has converged since the RB15 got its upgrades in France and Austria. They now tend to be strong and weak at the same places, with great slow-corner performance but a similar high drag that dampens their end-of-straight speed. The Mercedes has usually been able to retain the upper hand on account of a power advantage over the Honda in the Red Bull, but that may have narrowed recently.

Mercedes introduced cooling changes - circled in red - ahead of the German GP and then won in Hungary

Singapore, with its sequence of low-speed corners, heavily rewards the excellent downforce of these two cars and doesn’t unduly punish their relatively slow terminal speeds. So what might separate them in Singapore? Max Verstappen triumphed in Austria largely because the Mercs could not use all of their performance on account of being under-cooled. It was a problem inherent in the design of the car only manifest on a track without much straight-line running and a very high ambient temperature – which is exactly what the Austrian Grand Prix provided. As part of a subsequent Mercedes upgrade at the German Grand Prix, the cooling system had been revised, with major work re-siting the mechanical elements of it – and sidepod air intakes that were angled slightly outward to capture more cooling air. In the Hungarian Grand Prix we had a repeat of the Austrian combination and on that occasion the Mercedes performed just fine, allowing Lewis Hamilton to spend many laps pressuring Verstappen before switching to a two-stop strategy to re-catch the Red Bull and then overtake to win.

With their machinery converging, it could be a straight fight between Hamilton and Verstappen in Singapore...