Max Verstapen's challenge faded, leaving Antonelli alone at the front of the US Grand Prix
Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Kimi Antonelli continues to find new ways to excel and his victory around the Circuit of the Americas was right up there with Monaco and Monza. Leading from pole and leaving Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc to fight it out behind him, his meticulous control of himself and his Mercedes was such that he asked less of the tyres than the Red Bull and Ferrari and got by on one stop less than them without ever looking under threat. He thereby did his part in his championship quest perfectly, but it’s still not quite secured as George Russell and Lewis Hamilton retain tiny mathematical chances. But the fact that second (Russell) to fifth (Leclerc) in the championship are separated by just 11 points and contain drivers from four different teams suggests this would be a close-fought title but for Antonelli.
Mercedes came into the weekend still trying to fully understand its recent upgrade. Its deficit in the slow corners was still evident on Friday when Ferrari and Red Bull looked out of reach to them. But the team was greedily hoovering up the information from this demanding and varied track and Antonelli in particular made great progress into Saturday. But it wasn’t until Q3 that the W17 suddenly came properly on-song. Some of that may have been the conditions.
A volatile track, colder and windier in Q3 than in the earlier sessions, varied the form considerably. And in there were several vital clues about the mercurial competitive dynamic between the teams.
The sudden change in conditions threw Ferrari and Red Bull out – and opened the way for what Toto Wolff described as an Antonelli ‘miracle lap’ to be good for pole. When the track had been hot and the wind low, Red Bull and Ferrari were vying for the status of top car. The Mercedes, although super-fast through the fast sector 1, just didn’t have quite their slow turn performance. The McLaren was potentially fast but so wayward that its drivers were constantly having lap-destroying moments.
Leclerc looked to be th class of the field in qualifying until the temperatures dropped
Simon Galloway/LAT
But a bit of cloud cover and a few gusts of wind changed things considerably into Q3. On a rough, abrasive track surface and a track layout that overheats the rear tyres in the last few corners, taking a few degrees of temperature out of the track surface had a radical effect. The Red Bull lost grip and balance, the Ferrari was nowhere and as a result the Mercedes was no longer at a disadvantage in the slow corners. Antonelli did the rest with a beautifully judged lap, spectacularly on the edge through the fast turns, totally at ease with the car moving about beneath him, neat and composed through the slow turns of the middle sector – and with his rear tyres still in reasonable shape for the final two traction turns.
“And I didn’t even do a track limit,” he laughed in reference to his multiple such offences through the practices. He didn’t seem like someone burdened with the foreshadow of history. More like a kid just wallowing in the extravagance of his gift.
There was also the question of how much each team had biased their cars between qualifying and race because this is one of those tracks where you definitely pay for race pace with qualifying pace. How had each of the four top teams placed their bets?
We found out on Sunday, when the track remained as cool as in Q3 but without the gusts. What we saw once Antonelli had easily won the start on his medium tyres against the soft-tyred but always slow-starting Red Bull was that he was able to just drive to the pace of the gap behind, once he’d got it to 2.5sec. He’d got in there pretty much immediately because Verstappen and Leclerc had a ding-dong first lap battle which allowed Antonelli to escape. Leclerc had used his boost button to nail a brave around-the-outside pass on Verstappen through the Esses. Which left him down on battery at the end of the back straight, allowing Verstappen to get through the Turn 12-13-14 sequence wheel-to-wheel and eventually ahead.
Antonelli leads the way through Turn 1 at the start…
Grand Prix Photo
… while Leclerc and Verstappen battle behind
Red Bull
With the strategy delicately poised between a one stop and a two, the easier time Antonelli was able to give the tyres as a result of this initial gap was super-valuable. Verstappen on his softs could ill-afford to abuse them on a high fuel load chasing Antonelli. Every time he nudged the pace up a little, Antonelli would respond.
When Verstappen pitted early and Antonelli stayed out, implying a one-stop, Leclerc was briefly thinking he might win this. “Because we couldn’t see the one-stop working on our numbers,” and he could use a tyre offset to beat Verstappen. But Antonelli’s consistently hard pace even after the Red Bulls and Ferraris had stopped disabused him of victory dreams.
With a race that might be faster on a one-stop, ideally you do not want to start on the soft. The longer range of the medium will allow you to get a much fuller picture of the various degradation rates before making the decision. But the soft gave you that valuable traction boost off the line, so Red Bull – with its likely poor startline – was effectively obliged to take it. Just like Ferrari from row two.
Like most of the field, they suspected it was going to be a two-stop race so the downside risk of starting on the soft was reduced. But not eliminated. Mercedes, with the luxury of pole and the foreknowledge of Red Bull’s iffy start, could afford to go with the more strategy-flexible medium tyre. But still they were relieved when Antonelli held onto the place into and through that trouble-inviting first turn.
Medium-tyred Antonelli had the measure of Verstappen, on softs, during the first stint
Grand Prix Photo
Without that advantage of clear air, this would have been a much more complex race for Mercedes to win. The pieces fell into place beautifully to make its advantage look greater than it was. That was Mercedes’ post-race reading, anyway. They had the underlying pace of the McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull as within 0.1sec or less of them. The beautiful Antonelli pole lap had opened a much easier route to victory than would otherwise have been the case without the right tyre and the clear air. Antonelli’s victory margin was 13sec but could almost certainly have been more.
Once he’d got ahead of Leclerc, Verstappen set an initial chase of Antonelli while Leclerc and the following sister Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton drove a tyre-preserving pace, looking to capitalise later in the stint. That’s indeed how it panned out for Leclerc, who ran a couple of laps longer than Verstappen to the first stops and eight laps longer to the second. The tyre age offset and the fact that Verstappen had taken the medium for his final stint and Leclerc the superior hard, allowed Charles to close dramatically in the final stint. As Verstappen was catching the old-tyred one-stopping McLaren of Lando Norris in second, Leclerc was catching them both. Max threw his car down the inside of the McLaren at Turn 1 just before Leclerc could get to him, but it was only a matter of time. Once the Ferrari was past the McLaren, a relatively straightforward move into Turn 12 took him past the Red Bull too.
Norris, on ageing tyres, couldn’t keep Verstappen or Leclerc behind him
Mark Sutton/F1 via Getty
Verstappen was hampered for most of the race by an engine braking problem and by what in his estimation was the wrong tyre choice for the final stint. He was never happy with the car, but it was only a wayward moment away from pole. From there its race may have looked very different. As it was, there were, “too many issues with the power unit, where it was just very inconsistent behaviour around the corners, every lap, every corner, different behaviour. So, you can’t build up a rhythm, you can’t build any kind of consistency in the car. I had a slow pitstop too.”
But the Red Bull of Sepang and Singapore looked less formidable in Austin. “I think we are balanced as a car. We are not the fastest in high speed, we’re not the fastest in low speed, and I think maybe here you either need to be very fast in high speed or you need to be the quickest in low speed. When you’re none of it, you’re just a little bit average, and I think we were just a little bit average in the race. Of course, if we chose different tyres, probably we could have been second.”
Kimi Antonelli is likely to win the Formula 1 title at the Mexican Grand Prix. With a lead of 123 points, he’s on the cusp of becoming F1’s youngest-ever world champion. Just two drivers remain in mathematical contention. Here are the permutations
Ferrari was quick all weekend, apart from in Q3. That temperature and wind change dropped it out of a happy window it was in for the rest of the event. The team is trying to understand why it reacts more sensitively than the others to small changes in the environment. One theory is that the power shortfall gives them less scope to use wing angle to fine-tune the tyre behaviour. But it’s only a theory.
Hamilton’s race spiralled a little in the first stint, though he was quick on his final stint on the hard tyre and was able to catch and pass both Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull and the one-stopping Norris for fourth place, just 1sec behind Verstappen by the end. Hadjar, after his Verstappen-challenging qualifying time, lost out to the Ferraris at the start (that Red Bull startline performance again) but ran the first stint at a good pace. He converted to a one-stop but was compromised by a power unit problem which arose in the pitlane.
George Russell’s 5sec pitstop penalty for gaining an advantage by running off track in his dice with Oscar Piastri ensured he exited his stop behind the McLaren – and he’d find no way past for the rest of the race. Difficult times for George as his team-mate scales new heights. A scant four points for eighth place after qualifying 0.3sec slower must count as one of his worst weekends.
Mercedes’ pit crew pauses and the seconds tick by agonisingly slowly as Russell serves his penalty
Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Without the qualifying demand of having to drive it on the edge, the McLaren was a much better race day car. Norris’ pace was on par with Leclerc and Verstappen’s for much of the distance. But starting P8 limited his prospects.
A long way behind the top four teams, Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls held the upper hand over Pierre Gasly’s Alpine for best of the rest.
We know who Alberto Ascari’s successor is as an Italian world champion. But it will just have to wait for another few days for confirmation. But this was certainly a victory of which the great Ascari would have been proud.
