Mercedes' US GP: a performance leap or illusion that led to penalty?

Without any possibility of Verstappen passing on track – the cars were too closely-matched for that – Red Bull had to get creative. In what was always going to be a two-stop race because of the tyre deg, it pulled him in outrageously early, on lap 10. Mercedes had done something similar in the first race of the season at Bahrain, and it had won Hamilton that race.

Verstappen came in before he had even cleared the cars of Daniel Ricciardo and Charles Leclerc when he rejoined and to make the strategy work, he needed to pass them immediately. He passed Ricciardo on his out-lap and Leclerc pitted out of his way on the next lap. So that gave him the lead after Hamilton stopped. Hamilton went three laps longer and would run longer again to the second stops, following in the Red Bull’s wheeltracks, but knowing he’d have a significant new tyre grip advantage in the last stint. His last stop was eight laps later than Verstappen’s and he rejoined almost 9sec behind with 19 laps left but on tyres which, by dint of the age difference, should have been 0.8sec faster than Verstappen’s. So the game was set. They each knew what they had to do.

Hamilton’s task was to get on the back of the Red Bull at least a couple of laps before the end, but not use up all his tyre advantage in closing the gap. Verstappen’s was to accept that Hamilton was going to catch him before the end and not go so hard in between that he’d have no tyres left with which to defend. Hamilton was in the DRS range by the penultimate lap. “The last two laps were definitely difficult on the tyres,” said Max afterwards. “There wasn’t much grip left. But with two laps to go, I had the Haas in front of me and I was able to benefit from its DRS, so we managed to hang on in the end.”

It was a fascinating contest, and Verstappen had coolly aced it under full title fight pressure. It was immensely impressive. As Hamilton acknowledged afterwards.

2023

Last Sunday, Verstappen gained a place off the grid and Hamilton dropped one, putting them an initial fourth and fifth. Hamilton soon found his way past the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Leclerc – they were quick over a lap but with much heavier tyre deg than the other front-runners – and Verstappen was careful not to take too much out of his tyres in doing the same. By the time he’d got up to third, he was around 4sec behind Hamilton. But both were catching Norris’ race-leading McLaren.

Mercedes felt certain that the Red Bull was inherently quicker – it had left them behind by almost 0.5sec per lap the day before, after all – and although Verstappen was making no gains on Hamilton he was matching his pace. Mercedes assumed he was simply managing his tyre life. Actually, in the hot track conditions, he’d used up a lot of tyre life – and this was about as fast as he could feasibly go. Furthermore, he had another problem which was slowing him – one which Mercedes knew nothing about at this stage: his brakes.

They had been changed (under FIA supervision) after the sprint race and the blanking levels had been changed, in anticipation of racing in the pack, rather than from the front on Saturday. It seems the duct blanking had been a little misjudged, the discs were running a little too cool and at least one of them had glazed as a result. All Verstappen knew of it was that his pedal felt wooden, and as he felt the front tyres on the verge of locking, so he moved the brake bias rearward, only to find the rears were now trying to lock.

Just like two years ago, Red Bull brought him in early, but in this case it was just to get off those overworked medium compound tyres. He exchanged them for a new set of mediums. Hamilton by this time was within striking range of Norris and McLaren brought its man in to fend off a potential Hamilton undercut attempt. This just edged the Mercedes pitwall further towards an audacious one-stop plan. The reasoning was sound: it knew its fight was with Verstappen and figured that if it put Hamilton on the same strategy, they’d be beaten. Because they felt the Red Bull was quicker. It wasn’t, as it turned out. Not when it had glazed brakes.

Hamilton was tasked with getting to lap 23 to make the one-stop work. The tyres surrendered at the end of lap 19. The one-stop was bust and they had to reverse out of it, bringing him in on lap 20. Those extra four laps on old tyres as Verstappen was on new had cost him over 10sec and he was now behind the Red Bull and on the same strategy. The reputation of the RB19 and Verstappen had essentially scared Mercedes into a blunder. Only once he was on the verge of making the second stop – when it was too late for Mercedes to do anything – did Verstappen start relating his brake problem to his long-suffering race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. In very colourful language. “Noted,” said Lambiase with typical dryness. “What would you like to do with front wing flap at the stop?”

Both Verstappen and Hamilton were able to catch and pass Norris, as the McLaren was harder on its tyres. On the back foot, Mercedes attempted to rescue Hamilton’s race by running longer than Verstappen to the final stops – just as in ’21. Furthermore, because he’d run hards for his second stint, he could get onto mediums for the last one, with Verstappen obliged to switch to the slower hards. Hamilton rejoined 5.5sec behind with 17 laps to go, on tyres that were around 0.5sec faster. They’d arrived at it differently to two years ago, but were now in exactly the same situation as then: with Verstappen trying to go quick enough to force Hamilton to work his tyres but not hard enough that he over-worked his own. Down the gap came again. But not by enough. Hamilton was within 1.8sec on the penultimate lap. Easily enough for Verstappen to hold on. It had been a brilliant performance under the circumstances.

Then the sting in the tail and the disqualification of Hamilton (and Leclerc, in sixth) for the plank infringement. The Red Bull was visibly higher at the rear than either the Mercedes or Ferrari. Which would normally be a disadvantage with these venturi tunnel cars. Which left Mercedes with the question of just how much its improved form was down to its misjudgement of how low they could go…