It was a great drive but tbh, there wasn't much defending he needed to do. The Sauber was simply too quick in the straights and was able to accelerate out of a corner much faster than the Merc. Lewis would get right on his tail in sectors two and three but Nico would simply pull away in Sector one and the one time Lewis did pass, it was laughable how easily he was able to take the position back from Lewis on the straight.
That's my point, though. He just kept a level head, knew exactly what he had to do and then did it. Imagine Maldonado, Pérez etc. in that situation, they'd be all over the place, locking up constantly and generally trying to fight where it wasn't necessary, instead of just positioning the car properly and knowing where your advantage is.
He was holding up both Fernando and Lewis, but it was great to see the scirmish. If they weren't all nursing the right fronts though, I believe we would have seen a WAR not just a skirmish. We're being systematically robbed of good racing with the existing Pirelli tires, and to they guy that came to post that he was quitting watching F1 because of Vettle's domination, he should instead be pissed at the tires, as that's what's most wrong with the sport at the moment.
Agreed, the situation at present is ridiculous. Instead of making the tyres fragile, all they needed to do was make the gap between them greater and remove the rule that forces you to use both compounds during the race. That would open plenty of strategy options to the teams, without damaging the racing in such a way.