Easy victory for Verstappen in "unbelievable weekend" at Austin
Red Bull's Max Verstappen hailed an "unbelievable weekend" and said he was proud of everyone in the team after yet another strong display that brought victory for him at the United States Grand Prix. Lando Norris finished second after trailing Leclerc for most of the race.
When Isack Hadjar took his place as 20th on the grid, the lights went on one by one to kick off the Grand Prix, this time with a clean pass through Turn 1. Verstappen did exactly the same as in the sprint and cut off Norris for the inside line of the corner. Leclerc had a beautiful start and moved up into second place, surely helped by starting on soft tyres from the clean side of the track whereas the rest of the top 10 had medium compound tyres fitted.
Hamilton also had a solid getaway and emerged fourth, followed by Piastri, Russell, Antonelli, Bearman, Sainz and Tsunoda. Hulkenberg held on to 11th while Alonso lost two positions, from 10th to 12th.
Once DRS was enabled, Norris soon increased the pressure on Leclerc for second as the latter had quickly lost ground on Verstappen. Leclerc went on to drive defensively from lap 3 on while Hamilton also looked very eager to sneek past as soon as Norris would clear Leclerc. The trouble here however is the corner following up on the tight one after the hairpin, usually making it difficult to gain a position by braking and accellerating early out of Turn 12.
As Leclerc held on by defending the inside line to Turn 12, Sainz and Antonelli came together in Turn 16. Sainz blamed Antonelli for turning into him, but when collision happened the Spaniard slid straight forward with both front wheels locked. Sainz parked up a few corners later and Antonelli returned to the pits. Albon at the same time managed to run into Stroll at Turn 12, sending himself into a spin and continue again in 19th.
Sainz' retirement caused a brief VSC period to enable the marshalls to clear the track of debris. Once the limiter was off it appeared as if Leclerc had found a second breath, dropping Norris and Hamilton out of DRS range until lap 14. As Norris edged closer, Hamilton didn't follow and was suddenly 2.5s behind the McLaren.
But it wasn't all great news for McLaren as Piastri started to struggle with the condition of his front left tyre, soon underlined by Russell reporting he had the feeling Piastri wasn't going very strong.
Turn 12 of lap 15 was the closest Norris had come to Leclerc thus far, running pretty much side by side with the Ferrari into Turn 13 before having to give in. The battle of course immediately saw Hamilton rejoin the duo. Despite being close though Norris wasn't really menacing Leclerc and rarely came in a position to attempt an overtake of the following laps. It was the perfect scenario for Verstappen who by lap 20 enjoyed an 8 second advantage over the trio from second to fourth place. Piastri followed 4 seconds further down with Russell an additional 2.5 seconds behind.
On lap 21 Norris finally made it past and immediately received a black-and-white flag for track limits. Being told by his engineer, Lando replied "I know, I know, I know". Norris quickly distanced Leclerc who was pitted at the end of lap 24, but not before fiercely defending his position to team mate Lewis Hamilton, making the latter lose precious time.
Hamilton, clearly unhappy, replied with the fastest first sector, showing his team how holding him up through S2 and S3 of lap 24 was a mistake. Lap 25 was actually 0.2 seconds fastest for Norris and Hamilton that it was for Verstappen, the latter by then already 12 seconds ahead.
At the end of lap 29, Tsunoda became the first to pit his mediums from the start to soft tyres, aiming to complete the remaining 26 laps on that tyre. Piastri followed suit the next lap as everybody aimed to avoid the slow, hardest compound that Pirelli brought to the USA.
After Leclerc recorded the fastest lap so far, Hamilton also switched to softs on lap 32, rejoining in 6th, 4 seconds ahead of Piastri. 2 laps later everybody had completed their stop with Verstappen still in the lead, Leclerc back in second and Norris third at 2.5 seconds from the Ferrari. Hamilton followed 7 seconds further behind, then Piastri at 4 seconds and Russell at another 4 seconds.
Tsunoda, Hulkenberg, Bearman and Albon completed the top 10 with Bearman dropping behind the German after nearly colliding with Tsunoda in the fight for 7th place. Alonso followed in 11th but would move back up into 10th when Albon stopped for his second tyre change of the day on lap 37.
With 15 laps remaining, having put pressure on Leclerc for a couple of laps, Norris reported his soft tyres were "gone". This gave Leclerc some breathing space and triggered Lambiase, Verstappen's race engineer to inform the World Champion that the conditions may require calm tyre management, controlling the 6 second gap between the leader and Leclerc.
After allowing the tyres too cool down a bit, Norris upped the pace again in lap 47, getting DRS back in lap 49 for another attempt overtake that Ferrari and take the extra 3 points that come with second place over third. At the start of lap 51 Norris attempted at Turn 1 but saw Leclerc come back immediately. It did however set him up for a close chase on the back straight and finally that overtake had was looking for.
As Verstappen sailed to victory, Norris eventually finished a comfortable second as he really was heaps and bounds faster than Ferrari's Leclerc once in clean air. Leclerc finished third, followed by Hamilton and Piastri who rapidly sees his Championship advantage shrink.
