Oscar Piastri's spectacular lap-one pass around the outside of Lando Norris at Turn 9 in Formula 1's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix showed that he wasn't going to down without a fight.
The manoeuvre earned plenty of fanfare for the way it was delivered with inch-perfect precision during a campaign where Piastri and Norris have quite rarely been involved in such wheel-to-wheel passes.
But things are not always what they seem from the outside, and McLaren team boss Andrea Stella has revealed that the first lap switch of positions between its drivers had a tactical element.
Teams went into the race unsure about how bad tyre graining would be, and whether or not this would shift the Abu Dhabi GP from a normal one-stop into a two-stopper.
And, well aware of the different needs of its two drivers in terms of the results needed to win the championship, McLaren elected to take the unusual move of splitting strategies.
It put Norris onto the medium tyre that seemed to be the most obvious choice, while Piastri – to Red Bull's surprise – started on the hard.
Stella explained that this was done as a means of using Piastri to try to put Verstappen under pressure to push his medium tyres harder – and potentially grain them.
"I think everyone entered the race not clear whether it was a one- or a two- [stop strategy], but I think everyone was clear that the hard would have been a good tyre," he said.
"If there's somebody on a hard chasing somebody on a medium, the one on the medium needs to push and at some stage might have to pit. We were, if anything, a bit surprised that Max could go so long and so fast on the medium tyres."
But the ability to pressurise Verstappen on his mediums rested on Piastri actually being behind the Red Bull and shadowing him – rather than being stuck behind Norris.
And that is why a tactical move on the first lap – to unleash Piastri as the one to go chase Verstappen because Norris only needed third place for the title – had been talked about and agreed before the race.
And while Norris did not deliberately back off to let Piastri through to second, Stella said there was an element of, if a move was in the offing, then it would not be resisted.
"We did discuss and we discussed even more than usual that we obviously wanted to have absolutely clean racing in the first lap," said Stella.
"We also discussed that with Oscar on the hard tyre, kind of letting - or not making life difficult for - Oscar to take the second place and then try and attack Verstappen.
"[That] was a strategic option that Lando supported. So it was good and fair overtaking by Oscar.
"But in itself this is a scenario that we discussed, so it wasn't the hardest of the battles because there was a general interest from this point of view."
The call to go to the hard was something that was only committed to shortly before the race, as McLaren pondered how best to attack the Abu Dhabi GP.
"It's a collective decision which is made through several conversations," said Stella.
"It's not even a single meeting. You sometimes have a hypothesis on Saturday. You go, you sleep on it, and in the morning, somebody comes like, 'Have we considered this?' The decision was made a couple of hours before the race."
Piastri said that the gamble in going for the hard was worth it in seeing if it paid off with the win.
Speaking after the race, he said: "There wasn't anything left out there. Obviously, we tried a bit of a gamble on the strategy to give ourselves some different options and hope that the stars aligned to give ourselves the best chance.
"Ultimately, in the end, that didn't happen. I think given as well I missed a practice session, it took a little bit to find my feet, so I think that was the maximum we could have achieved. We didn't have an answer for Max's pace. So pretty happy with the weekend. Not much more we could have done."
