Howdy, MiniFans! We’ve landed in Texas for another S-race and the qualifying session for it left a fe surprises on the grid. Verstappen has once again managed to edge out both McLarens, scoring the position of priviledge, but that’s becoming kind of a usual sight. The real unexpected result was a bit behind them, with Hulkenberg having managed to find the perfect conditions to get up into fourth.
Eyes were on the two McLarens as the cars lined up on the grid: Verstappen could, and probably would, take risks, but neither papaya driver could afford to do the same, as the championship battle has to be fought rationally. However, expectations don’t always exactly come to fruition. Piastri, having had a faster start than Norris, got parallel to his teammate and had the position on the outside of turn one. After seeing his teammate brake late to try and avoid the overtake, Piastri tried to get on the inside, already past the apex, but found Hulkenberg. The Sauber later collided into Alonso as well, while the rebound took Piastri back into his teammate, leaving three of them out before the safety car was deployed.
The collision had left debris everywhere on track, so a few laps were spent behind the safety car as marshalls ran onto the track to retrieve the big pieces. It was a decent time to check where everyone had gone, as the turn 1 mess meant that avoiding cars could make you gain or lose a handful of places. Tsunoda, having become almost a plane about to take off in the start, had jumped up into 7th, while Russell and Sainz placed themselves behind the leader. Ferrari, the mot favored team by the incident, was eyeing the podium positions with Leclerc in front, followed by Albon, Tsunoda and Bearman to close the points positions for the S-Race.
Verstappen restarted the race before his usual location, trying to catch Russell by surprise, but the Brit didn’t let the Red Bull get away that easily in the first few corners. However, he couldn’t quite face him head on, but as he wasn’t threatened by Sainz in third, he could focus on catching up. The Williams could not afford to put his sight on the Mercedes, as he was clearly out of position and needed his full attention on his rearview mirrors to defend from his former teammate, Leclerc.
Russell gave it a try quite early on in turn one, getting both of them outside of the track and giving the position back just in case before he started to close up the gap again, as the Red Bull had had to leave the track to avoid contact. Behind them, Sainz had managed to shake off Leclerc slightly, who was soon being chased by Hamilton. Their battle gave the Spaniard some breathing space as Hamilton charged his battery and made one very calculated move on his temmate to get past, taking advantage of the only mistake made by the Monegasque. Once over, his eye was on the podium and started getting his strategy ready again.
The extra wear put on tyres in the first laps after the restart was starting to show through: Russell had dropped more than two seconds behind Veerstappen as he was being informed of his track limits warnings, while Hamilton was not able to get into Sainz’s DRS zone. The Spaniard, having been more careful with his set of mediums, the same kind of tyre everyone else was using, had a better degradation than the Ferrari, helping him clinch the podium.
The last few laps of this shorter race were under a second safety car, courtesy of Stroll and Ocon, when the first crashed into the second in the first corner in probably shouldn’t even be counted as an overtaking opportunity and left their cars parked beside the tarmac. Verstappen was all up the satefy car’s rear side under the instructions of his team for the last two laps, leading his rivals to the finish line.
The S-Race certainly was not what was expected, as Piastri was not as careful as a championship contenter usually is at this poinf in the season, and a similar move to that of Norris in the previous weekend left both of them out. This invited both Russell and Sainz into the podium, who miraculously managed to avoid the crashing cars in the first turn and found themselves accompanying Verstappen on the podium, who is starting to look like a true rival for the title up until the last checkered flag of the season.
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