Red Bull reigns - Alonso foiled - Perez pressure: echoes of the 2013 US GP

Reel back 10 years from now to 2013 and first we find Vettel at his zenith. It’s easy to forget just how dominant he was, just as Max Verstappen is today for the same team. Yet little did we know how Vettel would never again have it so good. Austin was the penultimate round that year, the 18th of 19 races, and Vettel had already wrapped up his fourth consecutive world title (two races earlier, at the Indian GP). In Austin he took his eighth pole position of the season and when team-mate Mark Webber dropped down the order from the start, it was essentially game over. Sounds all too familiar.

Tyre life was key as the drivers worked to conserve their Pirelli rubber to keep to the optimum one-stop strategy. But such considerations were no sweat for Vettel, who stroked to his eighth consecutive victory. He’d take a ninth in the Brazilian season finale – so much better than Abu Dhabi as a climactic venue – and equal Alberto Ascari’s record from 1952-53, for a total of 13 wins over the entire season. Now Verstappen has beaten the consecutive run (by one) and has 14 victories and counting for 2023.

In the past, Christian Horner has said Vettel hit a “different level” in 2013 but has recently suggested Verstappen is now surpassing Seb’s era of domination. It’s hard to argue with that. We thought (and hoped) we’d seen it all with Vettel – but then first Lewis Hamilton and now Verstappen have raised the bar. Domination is a running theme in modern racing.

Just 6.284sec behind Vettel back in 2013 was one Romain Grosjean, in something pretending to be a Lotus. Today the French-Swiss is gearing up for Lamborghini’s LMDh campaign – he’s been spotted testing in the past week – and has an uncertain IndyCar future following an unhappy conclusion to his time with Michael Andretti’s team. Ten years ago, Grosjean was working hard to shake off a reputation as a crash magnet – nothing changes – and, for a time, was succeeding. How he fended off Webber at COTA was a sign of the talent that finally appeared to be blossoming at Team Enstone.

Yet much like Vettel, we’d already seen the best of him. That second place in Austin, matching his runner-up finish in Canada a year earlier, was as good as it would get. There’d be a podium third at Spa in 2015, then years of hope mixed with calamity at the emerging Haas team before his deliverance from that horrible fire in Bahrain in 2020. Now perhaps his best hope is an enriching Indian summer in Lambos.

Who else was on the grid in 2013? Heikki Kovalainen was there as Grosjean’s team-mate, filling in for Kimi Räikkönen who was officially waiting for a back operation, but was really smarting from a lack of payment. He still had a second coming waiting for him at Ferrari.

Behind Webber was Hamilton, then in his first season at Mercedes. He could have only dreamed of the run he was about to embark on, armed with the hybrid-era sensation Mercedes was about to unleash. And there was Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari behind him, wrapping up yet another meaningless runner-up placing in the championship. He’s still tilting at windmills today, as brilliant as ever.

Nico Hülkenberg finished sixth in a Sauber-Ferrari. How far has he travelled? The Force India/Racing Point years, the deflation of hope at Renault and now the second wind – or should that be third or fourth wind? – at Haas today. Hülkenberg is now two races away from 200 GP starts and holds the dubious record of the most F1 appearances without a podium finish. A decade and more spent in the midfield. Others have achieved much less – but his greatest moment surely remains that cameo win at Le Mans with Porsche in 2015.

Valtteri Bottas scored his first world championship points, for Williams. So much promise… his subsequent 10 GP wins with Mercedes stand proud, albeit dwarfed by what the other guy was achieving in the car beside him. But he’s still there, all mullet and moustache, seemingly with a new joy for life. Here is a man at peace with staring reality in the eye: a damn good grand prix driver, just not quite good enough to be a world champion.

And ahead of him in the Austin results that day 10 years ago, in seventh, was another one: Sergio Perez. Out-qualifying and outracing team-mate Jenson Button was just what the Mexican had needed back then, given that McLaren had served notice that his one season at the team would be his lot. He’d blown his chance at a front-running team, apparently (although McLaren by 2013 was already spiralling into its sad mid-decade decline).

Now look at Perez, all these years later. His funding allowed him to plug away as a fine midfielder who overachieved in Force Indias and Racing Points. They sacked him anyway, only for Perez to deservingly land a seat in the best car on the grid. Now there’s a new pressure. At 33, is this it? The contract says he’ll remain at Red Bull for 2024, but will he really? No one needs to pick up the pace in Austin this weekend more than ‘Checo’, just as he did all those years ago.

Nothing changes, yet everything does, all at the same time. That’s F1.