YAS MARINA, Abu Dhabi -- After the Mercedes drivers locked out the front row of the grid on Saturday night in Abu Dhabi, Nico Rosberg remains on course for his first title on Sunday. The W07 Hybrid has shown strong pace over long practice runs, so a clean race should be enough for him to secure the top three finish he needs to become 2016 champion at the chequered flag. The main stumbling blocks along the way will be the start, a collision in wheel-to-wheel combat and the all-important tyre strategy.
In 2010 Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber saw their title hopes disappear into the desert night when they pitted at the wrong time and were shuffled behind Nico Rosberg and Vitaly Petrov, who had made an early stop under a safety car period. In the last race before the introduction of DRS and quick-degrading Pirelli tyres, Alonso and Webber got stuck behind the slower cars on better strategies and were unable to overtake.
Rosberg is unlikely to find himself in the same position on Sunday night given the pure pace of the Mercedes and the availability of DRS on the back straights, but Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo could provide a strategy headache after showing strong race pace during practice. Drivers need a speed advantage of roughly 1.1s over the car in front to attempt a passing move at the Yas Marina Circuit, so if Red Bull can gain track position, Rosberg could find himself needing to dig very deep to make a move stick.
So what are the chances of that happening? Red Bull has opted to start on the super-soft tyres, which opens up the possibility of a competitive one-stop strategy. Mercedes are expected to two-stop (the fastest strategy on a clear road) but could also force a one-stop from its ultra-soft starting tyre. If Red Bull have a similar race pace to the Mercedes, a one-stop could give Ricciardo -- starting third -- track position ahead of one or both Mercedes, but he will have to defend hard in the closing laps on older tyres.
"It is an offset strategy, but it is not the fastest strategy," Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said of Red Bull's decision to start on super-softs. "Our algorithms show the ultra-soft is the better tyre because you can't take the super soft much further, only a couple of laps.
"I guess Red Bull hasn't got the pace to win on the same strategy and the offset strategy gives them potential. It is a bit of a headache in a same way that Ferrari's pace is a headache. Our main objective is being fought out on track, when the lights go green it is all that matters."
Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether Hamilton attempts to back Rosberg into the pack to make life more difficult for his teammate.
With that in mind, the drivers have the following tyres available to make their respective strategies work:
The remaining tyre sets remaining for each driver in the #AbuDhabiGP title showdown... pic.twitter.com/sp0HVAiZu3
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