The fastest F1 car at COTA? Everyone is pointing somewhere else

There’s always a game between the top teams of denying they are the fastest and saying it is one of their rivals which is truly the pace setter. It might be a way of trying to remove pressure from themselves and switching it to the rival. More likely, it’s just the competitive mindset: assume nothing and approach the weekend as if you are on the back foot and therefore really need to dig deep.

But although that game was very much in evidence on the eve of this weekend’s US Grand Prix, it does have extra relevance this time. Because there are many reasons why the class of the field this weekend might be Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes. Probably not McLaren, given its recent struggles, but don’t even discount that possibility, so volatile is the form book according to the demands of each track.

Isack Hadjar, for one, does not believe Red Bull is currently the fastest, despite Max Verstappen having won the last two races from pole. “In Malaysia, it was dominant,” he concedes. “But I don’t think in Singapore it was the fastest car. That’s what I believe. I think if you put Max in the Ferrari, he would have won the race with more margin. So that’s my opinion. In Singapore, I think the Ferrari was the fastest car. Max qualified on pole by half a tenth. Ferrari didn’t have new soft tyres in the race, so this has an effect as well. So, Max put all the chances on his side, and he made the difference in Q3, and that was enough.”

The Red Bull, says Hadjar, is still a difficult drive. It may also be significant that the shifting ground beneath the COTA track has made it very bumpy. The Ferrari has historically handled the bumps better than the Red Bull.

Let’s take a reading from a neutral, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri: “I think on the data analysis, they’re always the quickest or joint-quickest in basically every corner this year. But they lose on all the straights, whether that’s from drag or power, I don’t know. But certainly we expected Ferrari to be the benchmark in Singapore, but we’ve expected them to be the benchmark at other circuits and it’s not turned out to be the case. I think they’re very strong. But I also think clearly Red Bull was very strong. Both stronger than us for sure! So, yes, I think over the last few weeks Red Bull has definitely become, I would say, the most consistently quick car. But I think each weekend the challenges are kind of rotating.”

Lewis Hamilton’s not buying into the Ferrari favourite theory. “Red Bull have done an amazing job for many, many years. They continuously surprise me. I’m full of admiration for them. I put my hand up that many, many years ago when I was younger I was like, ‘There’s no way they’re going to be able to do what these other teams, like McLaren with all that heritage and Ferrari with all that heritage, can do.’ But they have, and they’ve proved me wrong. They’ve continued to have amazing success over the years. But this one, [making their own] engine… I was like, ‘There’s no way that anyone’s going to build a better engine than what Mercedes, for example, or Ferrari are capable of doing with the resources and experience they have, and the IP.’ And yet again, they proved us all wrong again. They built the best engine. They’ve had the best engine this year.