Formula 1 eventually delivered the Singapore Grand Prix everyone wanted, but this race took its sweet time in getting there.
Daniel Ricciardo ultimately fell just short of stealing victory away from Nico Rosberg - by a scant 0.488 seconds in fact - but the Red Bull's pursuit of Rosberg's ailing Mercedes turned the closing stages into the sort of thrilling spectacle F1's new owners will surely hope to see more of.
Against Mercedes' own expectations, prospects for a genuine fight for victory looked all but over after Rosberg dominated qualifying.
Mercedes came to Singapore better prepared, but still nervous after a disastrous performance here 12 months ago, when it was briefly relegated to third fastest team behind Ferrari and Red Bull.
The Marina Bay F1 circuit was Red Bull territory, and Ferrari - though much maligned this season – was mighty around this place last year, as Mercedes failed to get the Pirelli tyres working correctly and Rosberg finished a distant fourth.
Free practice was a close-run thing, but all the signs pointed to Mercedes being in much better shape this time around, and a sublime performance by Rosberg in qualifying suggested his rivals had little chance of putting up much of a fight in the grand prix itself.
OK, Ricciardo's Red Bull made the front row, but thanks mostly to Lewis Hamilton underperforming after a tricky build-up to the session, while Ferrari was struggling for grip, and to keep Sebastian Vettel's rear suspension aligned. Kimi Raikkonen qualified a distant fifth, while Vettel was consigned to the back of the grid.
Mercedes looked to have this race under control from the start, and for the majority of the 61 laps after that point, once Rosberg burst cleanly from pole and led Ricciardo, Hamilton and Raikkonen into the first turn.
Max Verstappen wheelspun away his fourth place on the grid, which triggered the collision between Carlos Sainz Jr's Toro Rosso and Nico Hulkenberg's Force India that spat Hulkenberg into the pitwall across Verstappen's bows and took the German out of the race.
This also meant the Singapore GP maintained its 100% record of featuring safety car appearances since the inaugural race here in 2008.
But this safety car came far too early to cause strategic upset to the frontrunners, so Rosberg looked set to cruise to victory, provided he could keep his head down and his car's nose clean.
He controlled the restart easily, but found himself pegged at a lead of around two seconds to Ricciardo's Red Bull in the early running. Rosberg was struggling to control escalating brake temperatures on his Mercedes.
"We were very marginal, straight from the beginning," explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "But this is the name of the game in Singapore – you try to optimise everything and you could hear other cars complaining about brakes overheating.
"Both [drivers] suffered straight from the get-go. [But] Nico was running in free air and managed to cool the brakes easier."
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN STINT 1
With his brake temperatures better under control, Rosberg began stretching his legs again towards the end of his first stint.
Red Bull called Ricciardo in for his first stop at the end of lap 15 and gave him another set of super-soft tyres. Mercedes covered that move by pitting Rosberg on the following lap, bolting the harder soft compound tyres onto his car.
Ricciardo used the advantage bestowed by softer tyres to apply pressure to Rosberg, slashing a deficit of more than seven seconds at the end of lap 17 to less than four at the close of lap 27.
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN STINT 2
Rosberg still had to manage his brake temperatures carefully, which helped Ricciardo stay close enough to be in the race without ever really looking like a contender at this stage.
Once the Red Bull got within four seconds, Rosberg plugged the time leak and stretched his advantage back out to 4.659s by half-distance.
Red Bull again applied pressure by calling Ricciardo in for his second stop on the next lap, fitting soft tyres to his car. Again, Mercedes covered the attack by pitting Rosberg on the next lap and fitting another set of softs.
When that situation shook out at the end of lap 34, Rosberg led Ricciardo by 4.932s. Not far past halfway and this race looked done and dusted. Both of the leading two cars were on the same tyre compound, with barely a lap between them on tyre life. So long as Rosberg could keep his brakes in check, this race was in the bag.
That it turned into such a close-run thing at the end was all down to that Mercedes brake problem, only not the one afflicting Rosberg's car.
Team-mate Hamilton had suffered worse during the first half of the race, not helped by running in dirtier air behind Ricciardo.
"I was struggling with my brakes, they were way overheating," said Hamilton. "So I just had to slow down and watch the other guys pull away. I was just looking at different ways to try and get them back under control."
HAMILTON VS RAIKKONEN IN STINT 2
Hamilton struggled badly for speed on the soft tyre during that second stint, and ended up losing third place to Raikkonen's super-soft-shod Ferrari on track after locking up and running deep into Turn 9 on lap 33.
Raikkonen immediately dived into the pits to make his second pitstop, with Hamilton following suit on the next lap. By the end of lap 35 Hamilton trailed Raikkonen by more than six seconds.
Like Ricciardo and Rosberg ahead, Hamilton was stalemated against his opponent – roughly half the race to go; same soft compound tyres; little chance to counter-attack.
So Mercedes decided to switch Hamilton to 'Plan B', which involved turning up the engine, using up the tyres to attack the Ferrari, and making a third pitstop.
"All of a sudden my brakes were under control," Hamilton said. "It was partly because of the fresh tyres, but mostly because the car was getting lighter, so the brakes became a lot easier to control.
"Once my signal of brake overheating reduced, I was able to pick up the pace. I was still getting the warnings towards the end, but I just let it continue flashing as a warning and hoped for the best."
HAMILTON VS RAIKKONEN IN STINT 3
The race came alive once Mercedes decided to switch Hamilton onto an aggressive three-stop strategy to get him back ahead of Raikkonen and onto the podium.
This triggered a chain reaction of pitstops, first from Ferrari – which ultimately cost the Scuderia its chance of a podium finish – then from Red Bull.
A superior in-lap, out-lap and pitstop for Hamilton allowed him to steal third place back from Raikkonen, but Ferrari's decision to cover Hamilton's stop with one of its own also inadvertently allowed Ricciardo a 'free' stop and a chance to exert fresh pressure on Rosberg.
There no shortage of irony in the fact a strategic move by Mercedes to aid Hamilton ultimately resulted in what looked like a comfortable winning position for his team-mate and title rival coming under threat from behind.
Having closed to within three seconds of Rosberg, Ricciardo dived into the pits for a third time on lap 47 and Red Bull fitted fresh super-softs to his car.
Mercedes considered pitting Rosberg on the following tour, to cover that move and complete the chain. But Rosberg lost time lapping Felipe Nasr's Sauber, so Mercedes elected to leave him out rather than lose track position to the Red Bull.
"By undercutting Kimi [with Hamilton] we actually triggered the situation that Daniel had the gap to pit," admitted Wolff. "We couldn't [pit Rosberg] because Daniel would have won the race if we decided to pit first. It was a difficult situation."
Wolff also credited Ricciardo for a "stunning" out-lap after that third stop, which played its part in forcing Mercedes' hand.
Now the race was on. Ricciardo trailed Rosberg by 25.449s at the end of lap 48, so he needed to circulate roughly two seconds per lap quicker than the Mercedes over the final 13 laps of this race to stand any chance of causing an upset.
To begin with Ricciardo was absolutely getting the job done. He set the fastest lap of the race (1m47.187s) on lap 49, and for the first eight laps of that final stint lapped 2.520s quicker per lap on average than his rival.
But on lap 57 Ricciardo lost time lapping Felipe Massa's Williams, and getting bottled up behind Esteban Gutierrez's Haas across the last part of that lap and the start of the next one.
"Gutierrez at least makes it the same for everybody - he doesn't let anybody overtake," reckoned Wolff, who felt his own driver was also delayed while lapping the Haas.
"There is a fight for the race win going on between two guys fighting for every tenth, and then you have one guy cruising around and interfering in the race, and it happens to always be the same guy.
"We were shouting to [race director] Charlie [Whiting]. Felipe went out of the way and Esteban, who is a lovely boy, continued to cruise out there and was enjoying the gap he made to Felipe."
To be fair, Red Bull boss Christian Horner felt DRS gave Ricciardo back everything he lost lapping Gutierrez. But whatever, Ricciardo now had fewer than four laps remaining to bridge a 5.3s gap.
He came mighty close, getting within 2.1s starting the last lap and closing to within half a second before the flag, but Rosberg had just enough of a margin in hand to hold on, despite fading tyres and brakes.
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN FINAL STINT
"It was a matter of deciding when do we want him to push, because we knew we were marginal and we decided to give him everything for the last three or four laps to fight Ricciardo," Wolff explained.
"We concentrated all the right engine modes on these last couple of laps, in order not to bleed the battery out but have the power to fight back."
Ricciardo drove brilliantly all weekend, on a circuit at which he always excels. But for the second season in a row he was forced to settle for the second step on the podium. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride...
"I felt I did all I could, the perfect race," he said. "If there was anything that could have been more perfect it was the start, but Nico got off the line well, so even with an amazing start we wouldn't have got the jump.
"From that point we just tried to do what we could. It was good to push the whole race and I knew I would get close to Nico at the end.
"Even though the track's difficult to overtake on, it was nice to be able to push to the last lap and know I was at least putting some pressure on him, and giving the crowd a little bit of hope."
But Rosberg also drove brilliantly, easily his best performance of the season and reminiscent of Baku, another street circuit where team-mate Hamilton struggled in qualifying and Rosberg was unbeatable when it counted.
"I have known Nico since 2013 and that is the best Nico Rosberg I have ever seen throughout the weekend since then," reckoned Wolff.
"We have the tendency of saying that Lewis has awesome pace, and this is what we have seen with Nico this weekend, he was just blindingly fast.
"On the contrary Lewis didn't have a clean weekend - he was lacking laps in order to find the right set-up, so he couldn't really choose the direction, and from there on it went backwards."
Which is the case in the championship battle now too. Having worked so hard to turn a 43-point deficit into a 19-point lead before the August break, Hamilton has leaked 27 points to Rosberg over the three races since, as Rosberg has gone on the kind of winning streak he hasn't enjoyed since the early days of the season.
Hamilton still has six races left to turn around the eight-point deficit, but history sides with Rosberg. No driver has failed to take the title after winning eight races in a single Formula 1 season.
Formula 1 eventually delivered the Singapore Grand Prix everyone wanted, but this race took its sweet time in getting there.
Daniel Ricciardo ultimately fell just short of stealing victory away from Nico Rosberg - by a scant 0.488 seconds in fact - but the Red Bull's pursuit of Rosberg's ailing Mercedes turned the closing stages into the sort of thrilling spectacle F1's new owners will surely hope to see more of.
Against Mercedes' own expectations, prospects for a genuine fight for victory looked all but over after Rosberg dominated qualifying.
Mercedes came to Singapore better prepared, but still nervous after a disastrous performance here 12 months ago, when it was briefly relegated to third fastest team behind Ferrari and Red Bull.
The Marina Bay F1 circuit was Red Bull territory, and Ferrari - though much maligned this season – was mighty around this place last year, as Mercedes failed to get the Pirelli tyres working correctly and Rosberg finished a distant fourth.
Free practice was a close-run thing, but all the signs pointed to Mercedes being in much better shape this time around, and a sublime performance by Rosberg in qualifying suggested his rivals had little chance of putting up much of a fight in the grand prix itself.
OK, Ricciardo's Red Bull made the front row, but thanks mostly to Lewis Hamilton underperforming after a tricky build-up to the session, while Ferrari was struggling for grip, and to keep Sebastian Vettel's rear suspension aligned. Kimi Raikkonen qualified a distant fifth, while Vettel was consigned to the back of the grid.
Mercedes looked to have this race under control from the start, and for the majority of the 61 laps after that point, once Rosberg burst cleanly from pole and led Ricciardo, Hamilton and Raikkonen into the first turn.
Max Verstappen wheelspun away his fourth place on the grid, which triggered the collision between Carlos Sainz Jr's Toro Rosso and Nico Hulkenberg's Force India that spat Hulkenberg into the pitwall across Verstappen's bows and took the German out of the race.
This also meant the Singapore GP maintained its 100% record of featuring safety car appearances since the inaugural race here in 2008.
But this safety car came far too early to cause strategic upset to the frontrunners, so Rosberg looked set to cruise to victory, provided he could keep his head down and his car's nose clean.
He controlled the restart easily, but found himself pegged at a lead of around two seconds to Ricciardo's Red Bull in the early running. Rosberg was struggling to control escalating brake temperatures on his Mercedes.
"We were very marginal, straight from the beginning," explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "But this is the name of the game in Singapore – you try to optimise everything and you could hear other cars complaining about brakes overheating.
"Both [drivers] suffered straight from the get-go. [But] Nico was running in free air and managed to cool the brakes easier."
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN STINT 1
With his brake temperatures better under control, Rosberg began stretching his legs again towards the end of his first stint.
Red Bull called Ricciardo in for his first stop at the end of lap 15 and gave him another set of super-soft tyres. Mercedes covered that move by pitting Rosberg on the following lap, bolting the harder soft compound tyres onto his car.
Ricciardo used the advantage bestowed by softer tyres to apply pressure to Rosberg, slashing a deficit of more than seven seconds at the end of lap 17 to less than four at the close of lap 27.
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN STINT 2
Rosberg still had to manage his brake temperatures carefully, which helped Ricciardo stay close enough to be in the race without ever really looking like a contender at this stage.
Once the Red Bull got within four seconds, Rosberg plugged the time leak and stretched his advantage back out to 4.659s by half-distance.
Red Bull again applied pressure by calling Ricciardo in for his second stop on the next lap, fitting soft tyres to his car. Again, Mercedes covered the attack by pitting Rosberg on the next lap and fitting another set of softs.
When that situation shook out at the end of lap 34, Rosberg led Ricciardo by 4.932s. Not far past halfway and this race looked done and dusted. Both of the leading two cars were on the same tyre compound, with barely a lap between them on tyre life. So long as Rosberg could keep his brakes in check, this race was in the bag.
That it turned into such a close-run thing at the end was all down to that Mercedes brake problem, only not the one afflicting Rosberg's car.
Team-mate Hamilton had suffered worse during the first half of the race, not helped by running in dirtier air behind Ricciardo.
"I was struggling with my brakes, they were way overheating," said Hamilton. "So I just had to slow down and watch the other guys pull away. I was just looking at different ways to try and get them back under control."
HAMILTON VS RAIKKONEN IN STINT 2
Hamilton struggled badly for speed on the soft tyre during that second stint, and ended up losing third place to Raikkonen's super-soft-shod Ferrari on track after locking up and running deep into Turn 9 on lap 33.
Raikkonen immediately dived into the pits to make his second pitstop, with Hamilton following suit on the next lap. By the end of lap 35 Hamilton trailed Raikkonen by more than six seconds.
Like Ricciardo and Rosberg ahead, Hamilton was stalemated against his opponent – roughly half the race to go; same soft compound tyres; little chance to counter-attack.
So Mercedes decided to switch Hamilton to 'Plan B', which involved turning up the engine, using up the tyres to attack the Ferrari, and making a third pitstop.
"All of a sudden my brakes were under control," Hamilton said. "It was partly because of the fresh tyres, but mostly because the car was getting lighter, so the brakes became a lot easier to control.
"Once my signal of brake overheating reduced, I was able to pick up the pace. I was still getting the warnings towards the end, but I just let it continue flashing as a warning and hoped for the best."
HAMILTON VS RAIKKONEN IN STINT 3
The race came alive once Mercedes decided to switch Hamilton onto an aggressive three-stop strategy to get him back ahead of Raikkonen and onto the podium.
This triggered a chain reaction of pitstops, first from Ferrari – which ultimately cost the Scuderia its chance of a podium finish – then from Red Bull.
A superior in-lap, out-lap and pitstop for Hamilton allowed him to steal third place back from Raikkonen, but Ferrari's decision to cover Hamilton's stop with one of its own also inadvertently allowed Ricciardo a 'free' stop and a chance to exert fresh pressure on Rosberg.
There no shortage of irony in the fact a strategic move by Mercedes to aid Hamilton ultimately resulted in what looked like a comfortable winning position for his team-mate and title rival coming under threat from behind.
Having closed to within three seconds of Rosberg, Ricciardo dived into the pits for a third time on lap 47 and Red Bull fitted fresh super-softs to his car.
Mercedes considered pitting Rosberg on the following tour, to cover that move and complete the chain. But Rosberg lost time lapping Felipe Nasr's Sauber, so Mercedes elected to leave him out rather than lose track position to the Red Bull.
"By undercutting Kimi [with Hamilton] we actually triggered the situation that Daniel had the gap to pit," admitted Wolff. "We couldn't [pit Rosberg] because Daniel would have won the race if we decided to pit first. It was a difficult situation."
Wolff also credited Ricciardo for a "stunning" out-lap after that third stop, which played its part in forcing Mercedes' hand.
Now the race was on. Ricciardo trailed Rosberg by 25.449s at the end of lap 48, so he needed to circulate roughly two seconds per lap quicker than the Mercedes over the final 13 laps of this race to stand any chance of causing an upset.
To begin with Ricciardo was absolutely getting the job done. He set the fastest lap of the race (1m47.187s) on lap 49, and for the first eight laps of that final stint lapped 2.520s quicker per lap on average than his rival.
But on lap 57 Ricciardo lost time lapping Felipe Massa's Williams, and getting bottled up behind Esteban Gutierrez's Haas across the last part of that lap and the start of the next one.
"Gutierrez at least makes it the same for everybody - he doesn't let anybody overtake," reckoned Wolff, who felt his own driver was also delayed while lapping the Haas.
"There is a fight for the race win going on between two guys fighting for every tenth, and then you have one guy cruising around and interfering in the race, and it happens to always be the same guy.
"We were shouting to [race director] Charlie [Whiting]. Felipe went out of the way and Esteban, who is a lovely boy, continued to cruise out there and was enjoying the gap he made to Felipe."
To be fair, Red Bull boss Christian Horner felt DRS gave Ricciardo back everything he lost lapping Gutierrez. But whatever, Ricciardo now had fewer than four laps remaining to bridge a 5.3s gap.
He came mighty close, getting within 2.1s starting the last lap and closing to within half a second before the flag, but Rosberg had just enough of a margin in hand to hold on, despite fading tyres and brakes.
ROSBERG VS RICCIARDO IN FINAL STINT
"It was a matter of deciding when do we want him to push, because we knew we were marginal and we decided to give him everything for the last three or four laps to fight Ricciardo," Wolff explained.
"We concentrated all the right engine modes on these last couple of laps, in order not to bleed the battery out but have the power to fight back."
Ricciardo drove brilliantly all weekend, on a circuit at which he always excels. But for the second season in a row he was forced to settle for the second step on the podium. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride...
"I felt I did all I could, the perfect race," he said. "If there was anything that could have been more perfect it was the start, but Nico got off the line well, so even with an amazing start we wouldn't have got the jump.
"From that point we just tried to do what we could. It was good to push the whole race and I knew I would get close to Nico at the end.
"Even though the track's difficult to overtake on, it was nice to be able to push to the last lap and know I was at least putting some pressure on him, and giving the crowd a little bit of hope."
But Rosberg also drove brilliantly, easily his best performance of the season and reminiscent of Baku, another street circuit where team-mate Hamilton struggled in qualifying and Rosberg was unbeatable when it counted.
"I have known Nico since 2013 and that is the best Nico Rosberg I have ever seen throughout the weekend since then," reckoned Wolff.
"We have the tendency of saying that Lewis has awesome pace, and this is what we have seen with Nico this weekend, he was just blindingly fast.
"On the contrary Lewis didn't have a clean weekend - he was lacking laps in order to find the right set-up, so he couldn't really choose the direction, and from there on it went backwards."
Which is the case in the championship battle now too. Having worked so hard to turn a 43-point deficit into a 19-point lead before the August break, Hamilton has leaked 27 points to Rosberg over the three races since, as Rosberg has gone on the kind of winning streak he hasn't enjoyed since the early days of the season.
Hamilton still has six races left to turn around the eight-point deficit, but history sides with Rosberg. No driver has failed to take the title after winning eight races in a single Formula 1 season.
