How Hamilton battled until he had nothing left at US GP – race analysis

F1

Hamilton fought gamely, but the irresistible Verstappen-Red Bull axis was able to overcome a pitstop disaster to win

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Hamilton's race emphasised how the W13 is no match for the Red Bull

Mercedes

Mark Hughes

With a dramatic recovery to victory in Austin from a wheelgun failure at his pit stop, Max Verstappen sealed Red Bull its fifth constructors’ championship and its first since 2013.

Verstappen’s struggle was more than just the pit incident, though. Even without it, Lewis Hamilton had been on-course to have passed him at the second stops anyway, courtesy of Verstappen struggling with his tyres and Merc’s aggressive undercut attempt. Verstappen’s in-lap response to Hamilton’s stop wasn’t going to be enough to counter the Mercedes driver’s fresh-tyred out-lap. But ultimately even the failed wheelgun made no difference to the outcome. Once onto the reset of fresh tyres, the Red Bull regained its performance advantage and Verstappen was able to make up all of the lost time and more.

“It was all about the Red Bull’s tyre performance on the restart”

Changing the wheelgun lost Verstappen 9sec and dropped him behind not only Hamilton but Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari too. But what was behind the apparent variation in the Red Bull’s speed through the race, with a super-fast opening stint, a struggling middle one and a fast third?

It was all about the Red Bull’s tyre performance on the restart from eight laps under the two consecutive safety cars. These came between the first and second pitstops of what was always set to be a two-stop race.

This and the safety car’s wiping-out of the 5sec gap Verstappen had built, put Hamilton in a flattering position. The Mercedes was still clearly only the third-fastest car, having qualified around 0.6sec adrift of the leading Ferraris and Red Bulls. Ordinarily that would have put Hamilton and George Russell on the third row of the grid but the PU penalties of Leclerc (10 places) and Perez (five places), plus the first-turn spin of Carlos Sainz’s pole-sitting Ferrari (after contact with Russell’s Merc which pierced the Ferrari’s radiators) put Hamilton into flattering a position, ready to take full advantage of any Verstappen problems.

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After Sainz spin, Verstappen was able to control most of race

Red Bull

But although Hamilton’s early position had been artificially boosted, the first stint showed the true competitive picture, with Verstappen pulling away at around 0.4sec per lap, even while looking after his tyres and complaining about a tricky balance in the gusty conditions which brought crosswinds and tailwinds through Turn 1, the Esses and Turns 11 and 12 in particular. The Merc was faster through the Esses but slower everywhere else, especially on the straights.

With an advantage of over 4sec Red Bull was able to leave Verstappen out until a lap after Hamilton made his first pit stop and still emerge comfortably ahead. He had an even bigger gap than that as the safety car came out but that of course was demolished as everyone queued up.

The first safety car was to collect Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo from the gravel. The restart triggered another safety car as Fernando Alonso’s Alpine got airborne trying to pass Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin on the back straight – leaving the three-wheeled Aston wreckage in the middle of the track as Alonso limped to the pits for a new nose and tyres and rejoined at the back.

“Verstappen had the choice of hards or mediums – Hamilton did not”

At the second restart Verstappen was aggressively pulling away from Hamilton in order to get out of DRS range, which would be enabled after two laps. Hamilton, by contrast, rather than immediately attacking Verstappen just drove to his tyre temperatures while keeping a wary on Perez behind, though the latter was compromised by a front wing damaged at the first turn against Bottas’s Alfa.

In this way Hamilton was able to give his tyres a much more sympathetic warm-up than Verstappen and in a car which is usually generically easier on the rubber during a race stint anyway. After six laps of Verstappen edging away – he got the gap out to 2sec by lap 31 – Hamilton’s tyres were now in better shape and with the second pit stop window approaching, he was able to begin hunting him down.

“Thoughts on compounds Max?” queried his engineer as Hamilton continued to nibble time out of him. “These have no grip,” he replied of the hards. Verstappen had the choice of hards or mediums for the next stint. Hamilton did not – only fresh hards were available.

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On the 34th lap Hamilton was within 1.6sec – and Mercedes pulled the plug to bring him in. The stop was competitively quick at 2.7sec as his fresh tyres were fitted. His out-lap on his new rubber was sufficiently quicker than Verstappen’s in-lap on his old tyres that it looked likely Verstappen would have exited just behind. Only if Red Bull had matched its 2.1sec stop with Perez at the first stops might Verstappen have still come out in front without the delay. Its previous Verstappen stop had been 2.6sec.

As it happened, Verstappen’s 9sec wheelgun delay put him that far behind Hamilton and also lost him a position to Leclerc (who, like Verstappen, had been fitted with mediums).

Once Verstappen had used DRS to pass Leclerc he was 4.6sec behind Hamilton and there were 17 laps to go. Now we saw the true performance hierarchy between the two cars, just as we had in the first stint – and it showed the Red Bull to be a few tenths quicker once more. Its medium tyres would have given a small pace advantage in the first few laps anyway, but even as the gap between the mediums and hards narrowed with more laps (the medium’s calculated degradation rate was 0.22sec per lap compared to 0.1sec per lap for the hard), the Red Bull remained faster. As Hamilton pushed harder, so he locked up – twice at Turn 12, once at Turn 1.

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Verstappen proved imperious despite pitstop set-back at COTA

Grand Prix Photo

Verstappen was within DRS range by lap 49. Hamilton used his battery deployment to remain ahead for a couple more laps before he no longer had that extra energy. The Mercedes power unit was derating just as Verstappen got DRS down the back straight into Turn 12 with five laps to go. With a 40km/h advantage, Verstappen retook the lead, Hamilton hampered by vibrating mirrors not allowing him to know exactly where his rival was until he was alongside. The fight continued for a couple of laps before Hamilton’s tyres cried enough.

Verstappen ran out a comfortable winner from Hamilton, Leclerc, Perez and Russell, with the latter setting fastest lap after pitting late for a set of soft tyres. The intrepid Alonso was a remarkable seventh after rejoining last from his crash, only passed on the last lap by Lando Norris’ McLaren. But he was subsequently penalised for running much of the distance without his right-hand mirror.

Although pleased with his strong showing, Hamilton was keeping things in perspective. “Max had an 11-second stop, and he was behind Charles, to have got past Charles, and to have caught up six seconds, and pulled three seconds ahead of me, shows some serious speed.”