The previous year's race winner Nico Rosberg entered the round with a twelve-point lead over his teammate Lewis Hamilton in the World Drivers' Championship.

Their team, Mercedes, held a lead of two hundred and seventy-six points over Red Bull Racing in the World Constructors' Championship.

Max Verstappen spun and fell to 19th position after gently touching Nico Hülkenberg's Force India at the start.

Red Bull also chose to react by pitting Ricciardo at this time, fitting the yellow-walled Soft tyres as did all the other front running cars at this point.

In what was at the time expected to be his last Formula One race, Jenson Button was forced to retire with broken right front suspension on lap 12 from 8th position.

However, RBR took advantage of this conservative approach from Mercedes and chose to run Verstappen as long as they could in the first stint in order to complete the race on a 1-stop strategy and holding up Rosberg in the process.

Currently unsafe to Vettel.” Hamilton immediately responded with a 1min45.3s, to which his race engineer replied that they were happy with this pace.

At this point individuals within the Mercedes pit wall, namely his race engineer and the team Executive Director Paddy Lowe began to issue repeated orders to Hamilton to increase his pace, but Hamilton continued to rebuff their requests.

[5] Shortly after, as the leaders were lapping Carlos Sainz Jr and Jolyon Palmer, the Renault driver missed the braking point and rear-ended the STR of the Spaniard.

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes Team Principal was able to see two sides to Hamilton's actions, while not condoning his insubordination, understood the racer's mentality in this situation.