Formula 1 came to the Hungaroring expecting, or at least hoping, for a race a bit like Monaco - the one place Mercedes has looked genuinely vulnerable this season.
This track was expected to really suit Red Bull, which took pole in Monaco, nearly won the race, and is emerging once again as Mercedes' chief rival in F1. Even Mercedes came into this weekend concerned about a threat from the blue and red cars.
On top of this, Mercedes hadn't won the Hungarian Grand Prix under the current V6 hybrid turbo regulations - denied by Lewis Hamilton's qualifying engine fire, a safety car and Daniel Ricciardo's opportunism in 2014, and by Sebastian Vettel's rapid reactions at the start of last year's race.
At the Hungaroring the straights are short and the corners plentiful. The effect of Mercedes' biggest advantage - its engine - is negated. There is therefore a chance for a good chassis (and a hooked-up driver) to make more of a difference.
But the signs after Friday practice looked ominous for Mercedes' rivals. Hamilton crashed his car, but team-mate Nico Rosberg was nearly six tenths faster than Ricciardo in FP2, and the W07 enjoyed more than a second per lap advantage over the rest over longer runs on both of the main Pirelli compounds used here.
Red Bull closed the gap in final practice, where Max Verstappen lapped within 0.002 seconds of Rosberg, and the mixed conditions of qualifying presented a good opportunity to perhaps turn the tables on Mercedes.
But the track dried out in time for the crucial Q3 session, and yellow flags prevented any possible challenge to Mercedes' superiority, regardless of the rights and wrongs of how much a driver should slow down in this scenario.
With Mercedes locking out the front row of the grid, and overtaking notoriously difficult on this track when the race day weather is fine and consistent, the start represented Red Bull's final chance to deliver any sort of challenge.
Ricciardo gave it a good go, after getting a slightly better launch off the starting grid than both Mercedes drivers. As Hamilton challenged poleman Rosberg on the inside, Ricciardo tried to sweep around the outside of both at Turn 1.
But Ricciardo ran out of grip on the outside line, which allowed Hamilton to emerge with the lead. Rosberg seemed unsure which of the two cars to defend against, and had to back off at Turn 1 to avoid getting pincered, but he got a run on Ricciardo as the cars accelerated towards Turn 2.
Rosberg drove clean around the outside of Ricciardo at this left-hander, to reclaim second spot and restore Mercedes' one-two, just with positions reversed from qualifying.
At the end of the first lap Ricciardo trailed leader Hamilton by 1.927s, and by the end of the opening stint on super-soft tyres he was lapping close to a second slower than the Mercedes drivers. By the time Hamilton and Rosberg had both switched to softs, at the end of lap 18 of 70 the gap was approaching 10s.
But then the picture began to change. Ricciardo started consistently pulling time back, to the point where Mercedes began urging Hamilton to up his pace.
HAMILTON v RICCIARDO GAP - LAPS 18-30:
"We thought perhaps they were struggling," explained Ricciardo. "So we thought we'd try and be aggressive."
Mercedes became nervous of the fact Ricciardo closed to within a few seconds of Rosberg, and threatened to pit the second W07 first at the second round of stops should Hamilton fail to find more speed.
"Compared to practice we knew the temperature was a lot higher," said Hamilton. "I think it was 43 degrees track temperature in practice and race day was about 53, [so] it's an unknown how long these tyres were really going to last.
"We have a target which we need to get to, so once I got into the lead I was able to just manage my tyres, manage the gap, and react only when I needed to."
Realising this was now an occasion where he needed to get a move on, Hamilton responded, doing just enough to give Rosberg some breathing space from Ricciardo's charge.
Ricciardo pitted for the second time on lap 33, Red Bull becoming nervous of Sebastian Vettel's stalking prancing horse, after which Hamilton unleashed a sequence of high 1m24-low 1m25s laps - faster than Ricciardo could manage, even on fresher rubber.
Once the two Mercedes were back up to speed after making their final stops on laps 41 and 42, Ricciardo trailed by more than eight seconds again.
Hamilton and Rosberg now held a significant advantage on tyre life, as well as general car performance, so the rest of Red Bull's race became a battle to fend off Ferrari, rather than attack Mercedes for victory.
HAMILTON v RICCIARDO GAP - LAPS 43-70:
"Mercedes were in a league of their own," reckoned Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "You could see as soon as they were under a bit of pressure they turned the wick up and had a lot of pace in hand.
"They were obviously cruising very conservatively, and we saw their true pace when they could match Daniel's pace, and go quicker, on a worn tyre compared to him on a new tyre.
"They have an engine and chassis that is working extremely well in harmony. [Red Bull engine supplier] Renault has made some great steps, and there are more in the pipeline, [but] we know we're 35kW behind - that's what the Renault guys tell us."
This means Red Bull is disadvantaged considerably on the straights, and particularly through sector one of the Hungaroring, but it also means the RB12 approaches the corners slower than the W07, which means it will have less of its potential downforce available to help the drivers carry speed into the turns.
Once some of the speed and downforce has bled off, the RB12 holds up very well mid-corner - arguably better than the Mercedes does - but it simply needs more straightline speed to be able to really carry the fight.
Given Renault is planning no further engine updates until 2017, Red Bull is unlikely to be anything other than an opportunistic challenger for the rest of this season.
"We have some fuel and tuning and driveability that there's definitely performance to come from," added Horner. "So we're quite confident that that there will still be some steps of performance by tidying up what we actually have.
"Pre-season we thought we'd be lucky to be in the top five, so to be fighting Ferrari - one point behind at the halfway point in the season, having won a race and secured our sixth podium finish, [represents] a great first half of the year for us."
There is no doubt Red Bull is improving, but by the end of the race Mercedes had more than 25s in hand over both Red Bull and Ferrari, which possesses more engine power than Red Bull but has less downforce available, so ends up in a roughly similar position depending on the exact nature of the circuit.
Ferrari proved a strong challenger to Red Bull in this race, after struggling with set-up throughout practice, but it was also nowhere near challenging Mercedes at a circuit where it snatched an opportunistic victory last season.
"We anticipated that they [Red Bull] were going to be closer and also Ferrari," said Hamilton. "I don't think they were able to keep my pace and I don't know what the reason is for that.
"But we seemed to be in a good position this weekend, which is really strange because we've not really made many changes to the car in the last few races, so it's almost like they've lost pace."
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was naturally delighted his cars showed such devastating speed in a race that has not been kind to the Silver Arrows in recent seasons.
"This was not a track where we have been looking very good in the last couple of years - if you would characterise the track you would say that it's more a Red Bull track or a Ferrari track," he said.
"We have progressed overall with the package - the chassis, engine combination - and that materialised at Silverstone, where we were doing well, and in Hungary. Monaco was a bit different.
"We haven't shown lots of up and downs in terms of how the car performs on a specific track. We were good on every layout so far this season, which is a positive indication for the second half of the season considering there is no more development.
"In some of the sessions Red Bull was really strong. In the wet they are really a force, but in the race we were in control."
F1 teams often talk about track layouts and how they affect competitiveness. Although the narrow and twisty layout of the Hungaroring is often compared to Monaco, in actual fact it is a much faster circuit, with longer straightline sections.
But that alone is not enough to explain why Mercedes was so dominant here this year. This was its second biggest winning margin of the season, bettered only by the particular circumstances of April's Chinese GP, where the Ferraris ran into each other on the first lap and Ricciardo's Red Bull suffered a puncture.
It's likely that re-surfacing the track and re-profiling the kerbs of the Hungaroring for 2016 played further into Mercedes' hands, taking away the sort of bumps and rough edges that unsettle cars and make them more difficult to drive, allowing the Mercedes drivers more space to stretch their legs.
Certainly Rosberg felt the new asphalt helped him to be relatively more competitive compared to Hamilton this year.
"I was very, very happy with my pace all weekend," he said. "I was really quick in all conditions. The new asphalt suits me. As we saw in Baku and in Austria, I have a good feeling on this asphalt. That's why it's all the more disappointing to lose out in Turn 1."
HAMILTON v ROSBERG GAP - LAPS 43-70:
Rosberg actually looked pretty racy over the final part of this grand prix, and twice got within DRS range of Hamilton, first when Hamilton was balked lapping Esteban Gutierrez's Haas, and later when Hamilton locked up his brakes "over a bump" and ran wide at Turn 12 with eight laps to run.
But on each occasion Hamilton pumped in quick laps subsequently to restore his advantage. Rosberg tracked his rival, but eventually finished just under two seconds down.
The result means Hamilton has finally overturned Rosberg's advantage in the title race. The reigning champion now leads by six points, with 11 of 21 races completed. Considering he trailed by 43 after five, that's quite some turnaround.
Not that Rosberg is overly concerned by the 49-point swing in his chief rival's favour.
"I've said all the time I'm not counting points, and I also fully expected him to come back," said Rosberg. "It ebbs and flows and it's always going to be a tough battle against Lewis - he's a world champion.
"I'm just looking at the races. I'm very disappointed because I wanted to win in Hungary, not because some points went this way or that.
"Now it's just simple that you can say Lewis has done the best job so far this season, by six points. It's a change, but it doesn't change much for me, because it's so close and I'm out there in every race with the opportunity to win.
"The last races it's been so close, and it's just taken a small thing to switch the other way, so I want to turn [things] around for the next race at Hockenheim."
But don't expect any change in the competitive order. F1 hasn't been to Hockenheim since 2014, but back then Rosberg won by nearly 21 seconds.
Even on a circuit where Mercedes has previously looked vulnerable it is now devastatingly dominant. And that's devastating news for those crying out for F1 to become more than just a two-horse race.
Formula 1 came to the Hungaroring expecting, or at least hoping, for a race a bit like Monaco - the one place Mercedes has looked genuinely vulnerable this season.
This track was expected to really suit Red Bull, which took pole in Monaco, nearly won the race, and is emerging once again as Mercedes' chief rival in F1. Even Mercedes came into this weekend concerned about a threat from the blue and red cars.
On top of this, Mercedes hadn't won the Hungarian Grand Prix under the current V6 hybrid turbo regulations - denied by Lewis Hamilton's qualifying engine fire, a safety car and Daniel Ricciardo's opportunism in 2014, and by Sebastian Vettel's rapid reactions at the start of last year's race.
At the Hungaroring the straights are short and the corners plentiful. The effect of Mercedes' biggest advantage - its engine - is negated. There is therefore a chance for a good chassis (and a hooked-up driver) to make more of a difference.
But the signs after Friday practice looked ominous for Mercedes' rivals. Hamilton crashed his car, but team-mate Nico Rosberg was nearly six tenths faster than Ricciardo in FP2, and the W07 enjoyed more than a second per lap advantage over the rest over longer runs on both of the main Pirelli compounds used here.
Red Bull closed the gap in final practice, where Max Verstappen lapped within 0.002 seconds of Rosberg, and the mixed conditions of qualifying presented a good opportunity to perhaps turn the tables on Mercedes.
But the track dried out in time for the crucial Q3 session, and yellow flags prevented any possible challenge to Mercedes' superiority, regardless of the rights and wrongs of how much a driver should slow down in this scenario.
With Mercedes locking out the front row of the grid, and overtaking notoriously difficult on this track when the race day weather is fine and consistent, the start represented Red Bull's final chance to deliver any sort of challenge.
Ricciardo gave it a good go, after getting a slightly better launch off the starting grid than both Mercedes drivers. As Hamilton challenged poleman Rosberg on the inside, Ricciardo tried to sweep around the outside of both at Turn 1.
But Ricciardo ran out of grip on the outside line, which allowed Hamilton to emerge with the lead. Rosberg seemed unsure which of the two cars to defend against, and had to back off at Turn 1 to avoid getting pincered, but he got a run on Ricciardo as the cars accelerated towards Turn 2.
Rosberg drove clean around the outside of Ricciardo at this left-hander, to reclaim second spot and restore Mercedes' one-two, just with positions reversed from qualifying.
At the end of the first lap Ricciardo trailed leader Hamilton by 1.927s, and by the end of the opening stint on super-soft tyres he was lapping close to a second slower than the Mercedes drivers. By the time Hamilton and Rosberg had both switched to softs, at the end of lap 18 of 70 the gap was approaching 10s.
But then the picture began to change. Ricciardo started consistently pulling time back, to the point where Mercedes began urging Hamilton to up his pace.
HAMILTON v RICCIARDO GAP - LAPS 18-30:
"We thought perhaps they were struggling," explained Ricciardo. "So we thought we'd try and be aggressive."
Mercedes became nervous of the fact Ricciardo closed to within a few seconds of Rosberg, and threatened to pit the second W07 first at the second round of stops should Hamilton fail to find more speed.
"Compared to practice we knew the temperature was a lot higher," said Hamilton. "I think it was 43 degrees track temperature in practice and race day was about 53, [so] it's an unknown how long these tyres were really going to last.
"We have a target which we need to get to, so once I got into the lead I was able to just manage my tyres, manage the gap, and react only when I needed to."
Realising this was now an occasion where he needed to get a move on, Hamilton responded, doing just enough to give Rosberg some breathing space from Ricciardo's charge.
Ricciardo pitted for the second time on lap 33, Red Bull becoming nervous of Sebastian Vettel's stalking prancing horse, after which Hamilton unleashed a sequence of high 1m24-low 1m25s laps - faster than Ricciardo could manage, even on fresher rubber.
Once the two Mercedes were back up to speed after making their final stops on laps 41 and 42, Ricciardo trailed by more than eight seconds again.
Hamilton and Rosberg now held a significant advantage on tyre life, as well as general car performance, so the rest of Red Bull's race became a battle to fend off Ferrari, rather than attack Mercedes for victory.
HAMILTON v RICCIARDO GAP - LAPS 43-70:
"Mercedes were in a league of their own," reckoned Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "You could see as soon as they were under a bit of pressure they turned the wick up and had a lot of pace in hand.
"They were obviously cruising very conservatively, and we saw their true pace when they could match Daniel's pace, and go quicker, on a worn tyre compared to him on a new tyre.
"They have an engine and chassis that is working extremely well in harmony. [Red Bull engine supplier] Renault has made some great steps, and there are more in the pipeline, [but] we know we're 35kW behind - that's what the Renault guys tell us."
This means Red Bull is disadvantaged considerably on the straights, and particularly through sector one of the Hungaroring, but it also means the RB12 approaches the corners slower than the W07, which means it will have less of its potential downforce available to help the drivers carry speed into the turns.
Once some of the speed and downforce has bled off, the RB12 holds up very well mid-corner - arguably better than the Mercedes does - but it simply needs more straightline speed to be able to really carry the fight.
Given Renault is planning no further engine updates until 2017, Red Bull is unlikely to be anything other than an opportunistic challenger for the rest of this season.
"We have some fuel and tuning and driveability that there's definitely performance to come from," added Horner. "So we're quite confident that that there will still be some steps of performance by tidying up what we actually have.
"Pre-season we thought we'd be lucky to be in the top five, so to be fighting Ferrari - one point behind at the halfway point in the season, having won a race and secured our sixth podium finish, [represents] a great first half of the year for us."
There is no doubt Red Bull is improving, but by the end of the race Mercedes had more than 25s in hand over both Red Bull and Ferrari, which possesses more engine power than Red Bull but has less downforce available, so ends up in a roughly similar position depending on the exact nature of the circuit.
Ferrari proved a strong challenger to Red Bull in this race, after struggling with set-up throughout practice, but it was also nowhere near challenging Mercedes at a circuit where it snatched an opportunistic victory last season.
"We anticipated that they [Red Bull] were going to be closer and also Ferrari," said Hamilton. "I don't think they were able to keep my pace and I don't know what the reason is for that.
"But we seemed to be in a good position this weekend, which is really strange because we've not really made many changes to the car in the last few races, so it's almost like they've lost pace."
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was naturally delighted his cars showed such devastating speed in a race that has not been kind to the Silver Arrows in recent seasons.
"This was not a track where we have been looking very good in the last couple of years - if you would characterise the track you would say that it's more a Red Bull track or a Ferrari track," he said.
"We have progressed overall with the package - the chassis, engine combination - and that materialised at Silverstone, where we were doing well, and in Hungary. Monaco was a bit different.
"We haven't shown lots of up and downs in terms of how the car performs on a specific track. We were good on every layout so far this season, which is a positive indication for the second half of the season considering there is no more development.
"In some of the sessions Red Bull was really strong. In the wet they are really a force, but in the race we were in control."
F1 teams often talk about track layouts and how they affect competitiveness. Although the narrow and twisty layout of the Hungaroring is often compared to Monaco, in actual fact it is a much faster circuit, with longer straightline sections.
But that alone is not enough to explain why Mercedes was so dominant here this year. This was its second biggest winning margin of the season, bettered only by the particular circumstances of April's Chinese GP, where the Ferraris ran into each other on the first lap and Ricciardo's Red Bull suffered a puncture.
It's likely that re-surfacing the track and re-profiling the kerbs of the Hungaroring for 2016 played further into Mercedes' hands, taking away the sort of bumps and rough edges that unsettle cars and make them more difficult to drive, allowing the Mercedes drivers more space to stretch their legs.
Certainly Rosberg felt the new asphalt helped him to be relatively more competitive compared to Hamilton this year.
"I was very, very happy with my pace all weekend," he said. "I was really quick in all conditions. The new asphalt suits me. As we saw in Baku and in Austria, I have a good feeling on this asphalt. That's why it's all the more disappointing to lose out in Turn 1."
HAMILTON v ROSBERG GAP - LAPS 43-70:
Rosberg actually looked pretty racy over the final part of this grand prix, and twice got within DRS range of Hamilton, first when Hamilton was balked lapping Esteban Gutierrez's Haas, and later when Hamilton locked up his brakes "over a bump" and ran wide at Turn 12 with eight laps to run.
But on each occasion Hamilton pumped in quick laps subsequently to restore his advantage. Rosberg tracked his rival, but eventually finished just under two seconds down.
The result means Hamilton has finally overturned Rosberg's advantage in the title race. The reigning champion now leads by six points, with 11 of 21 races completed. Considering he trailed by 43 after five, that's quite some turnaround.
Not that Rosberg is overly concerned by the 49-point swing in his chief rival's favour.
"I've said all the time I'm not counting points, and I also fully expected him to come back," said Rosberg. "It ebbs and flows and it's always going to be a tough battle against Lewis - he's a world champion.
"I'm just looking at the races. I'm very disappointed because I wanted to win in Hungary, not because some points went this way or that.
"Now it's just simple that you can say Lewis has done the best job so far this season, by six points. It's a change, but it doesn't change much for me, because it's so close and I'm out there in every race with the opportunity to win.
"The last races it's been so close, and it's just taken a small thing to switch the other way, so I want to turn [things] around for the next race at Hockenheim."
But don't expect any change in the competitive order. F1 hasn't been to Hockenheim since 2014, but back then Rosberg won by nearly 21 seconds.
Even on a circuit where Mercedes has previously looked vulnerable it is now devastatingly dominant. And that's devastating news for those crying out for F1 to become more than just a two-horse race.