2025 US GP: Post Race Analysis

The problem with Sprint races is they tend to give a preview to what we can expect in the race, and in this case it was another snooze fest. We can say F1 and Pirelli need to figure out the tires so they can actually race, but it's been 15 years and they are still haven't got it right. It's hopeless.

Red Bull had a great day. Max of course winning from start to finish and closing the points deficit to Oscar by 23 points. Yuki had a very positive weekend on his side of the garage. 7th in both the sprint and the race. His small contributions may actually be important as Red Bull is now just 10 points out of 2nd in the WCC.

McLaren while still having the best car definitely had an off day. No information from the Sprint race perhaps effected their race pace. Lando had a wonderful battle with Charles Leclerc and eventually got passed to score 2nd. Oscar another poor weekend finishing just 5th with no pace to even attack Lewis ahead. No doubt the pressure is starting to build.

Ferrari looked miserable on Friday and did a fantastic job to turn it around for Sunday. Charles drove brilliantly to hold off Lando as long as he did. Perfect defense for so many laps. Lewis had a good day as well. Not terribly far off Leclerc's pace and a good 4th place finish. It appears Charles is determined to race Lewis hard, even in unnecessary moments. A little unusual from his side but definitely welcome.

Mercedes had a good enough car but track position meant a lot. Perhaps not as much as George liked to say but dirty air does matter. P5 for George and a disappointing P13 for Kimi, but that was the result of getting punted by Sainz.

Sauber in the points. Hulkenberg was a stud all weekend and made the most of the package he had. One of the stars of the race. Bortoleto started from the back and just couldn't make any progress. Another example of how dirty air matters.

Haas is getting most of their production from rookie Ollie Bearman at this stage. Another great performance that perhaps could have been even better but his little scuffle with Tsunoda cost him. Fortunately it wasn't a major collision. Ocon in P15 is his 4th straight race without a point.

Aston Martin probably expected a little bit more. Surely they thought they'd be above Sauber. Alonso had decent qualifying performance but looked to struggle in the race. At one point was just 2 seconds ahead of his teammate who started dead last. Still collected a point. Lance Stroll had a good race by his standards. Kept it clean and even made a couple of passes while on better tires.

RB didn't look particularly good this weekend. Lawson was on the heels of Alonso but 11th was all he could do. Hadjar his share of struggles and mistakes which left him P16.

Williams a big disappointment. A nice throw back livery was probably their highlight. Sainz seemed to have decent pace but his throw it down the inside and drive his competitive off the track move that did work and was technically within the rules, eventually caught up with him and he crashed into Kimi. DNF for him. Albon starting from the back didn't move forward like expected. Even Stroll did a better job.

Alpine was simply a piece of junk and likely will be for the remainder of the season. For once Colapinto looked faster than Gasly, but who cares when it's for 17th.

Driver of the Day: Charles Leclerc. Driving perfection when defending against Lando in a faster car and with the better tires. Even more impressive when you consider how far off they were in the Sprint Race.

 

I should add that I liked the Long Horn trophy they gave out. It beats the hell out of the usual cheap ceramic vase they give out.

 

Probably the wrong venue, but I so want to see Max and Charles in basically equal cars going at it, I think they would both race super hard and clean. What a show. The 2 best on the track in my opinion.

 

<rant> Super boring race, what can I say... </rant>

 

A predictable win for Max. Either watching Sprint, Practice or Qualy showed this was on the way. DRS trains etc. Not much of a race. The aero yields weak race even in Austin now lol.

 

McLaren will likely have no gas in the tank to actually beat max.

 

Tend to agree i watched the race with one eye open, but it did raise the heart beat on a few occasions, agree with OP, the tyre fiasco is a disgrace to call it motor racing..... driver and machine.

The FIA wont change the tyre rules and the so called cost cap is undoubtebly circumnavigated by most of the top teams and hasnt really levelled out the playing field either. The small teams will always be second best with occasional good performances.

 

The tire s**t! Deciding position on tire choice should be out. Want to see flat out racing like in the past. Why have a rule to run two compounds?

 

Would be nice. Let the teams, drivers decide tires, and stop COACHING 30mil per year drivers. They need to sort their situation, not be nanny'd with an engineer telling them they need to apply earlier throttle on turns 14 and 15.

 

Interesting assessment from SKY - Ted also I think tyre wear for RedBull in clear air was an enormous benefit to them.

--Unlike their rivals, McLaren didn’t gain any data from the sprint race.

Piastri and Norris crashed out on the opening lap of the sprint following an unfortunate multi-car collision.

With parc fermé conditions lifted after the sprint race on Saturday, teams were allowed to make crucial setup changes.

Kravitz’s theory for McLaren’s struggles
While Norris’ race was compromised by being stuck behind Leclerc, it looked as if he still had similar pace to Verstappen in front.

However, Verstappen might have had pace in hand, given the margin he had built up due to Leclerc.

In the ground-effect era, ride height and ensuring the plank isn’t excessively worn has been a balancing act for all teams.

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Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris
Both Ferraris were disqualified from the Chinese GP due to excessive wear - an issue that has plagued them all season.

Kravitz thinks McLaren didn’t optimise this, hence their lack of pace relative to earlier in the season.

“Piastri was never anywhere near Hamilton. And it all began at the start of the weekend,” Kravitz said after the race.

“Then it was made worse with an OK practice session. I mean, it was fine. It was all made worse for McLaren in the Sprint Race because of Oscar’s ill-judged move with Nico Hulkenberg at the front that hit him into Lando Norris, and because neither McLaren did the Sprint Race, they didn’t know how the car was going to be on its ride heights.

“They didn’t know how to set the ride height so as to be in the perfect position to be as close to the ground and get a nice downforce, but not wear away the legality plank.

“The piece of wood they have underneath the car to stop the car from running too close to the ground.

“So, they had to be conservative. McLaren had to raise the car up a little bit and give themselves some margin. So, performance just ebbed away.

“Red Bull, Max won the Sprint. They knew exactly where to suspend their car, where to run their car so that they’d be as close to the ground as possible, giving maximum downforce and not wear away the plank. They got it spot on.

 

Yes we did notice lol - Max has the 1 lap pace currently.

Russell frustrated by current F1 racing: "It's a race to Turn 1"
Overtaking opportunities were hard to create at the Circuit of the Americas over the US GP due to limited F1 strategy options

George Russell was left frustrated by the current state of racing in Formula 1 after the United States Grand Prix, claiming it is all down to qualifying and what happens at the start.

The Mercedes driver finished sixth on Sunday after dropping down to that position at lights out, while most runners used a one-stop strategy to make it hard for Russell to jump back up the order using strategic variance.

Max Verstappen eventually dominated the Austin race, marking the 13th time this year that a grand prix has been won from pole, with only six occasions in which that hasn’t happened.

“Right now in F1 it's a race to Turn 1,” Russell told Sky Sports F1. “There's no tyre degradation, there's only three tenths between the quickest car and the slowest car in the top six.

 

Leaves me wondering if Bridgestone would have it figured out.

Bring back the tire wars--if for no other reason than to enable good close hard racing.

 

In large, George Russell is correct. In dry races it's follow the leader after the first lap. Management has been the plague of F1 since 2010 and it's especially bad with Pirelli tires. They simply cannot build a good tire for F1. People will say it's F1/FIA that tell Pirelli to build a tire a certain way but that isn't entirely true.

It's not a tire wear problem it's a temperature problem. The operating window for the Pirelli tires are ultra narrow and have been since 2011. The drivers just can't push the tires without overheating them. If it's not core temp or surface temp its tire pressures. In the rare case the tires are happy in their performance window, then they do wear out too quickly. It's never right.

The drivers are managing so much they are driving upwards of 1 second a lap slower than the car can do and you wonder why don't they just push the car, go 1 second faster and gain 20 seconds per stint. We talked about how the tires can't take it, but they also don't even have enough tires to run that strategy. Especially on Sprint weekends where they are giving 1 LESS tire even though they are doing 2 quali sessions and 2 races. Make that make sense. Despite the tires, they are also managing fuel and plank wear.

Teams under-fuel the cars. This means less stress on the tires and a fastest lap time when they do push the car in the earlier stages of the race. That's fine. But they have to manage the fuel just so they can finish the race. Ferrari have become notorious for their "LICO" or lift and coast. A normal tactic to save fuel and brakes or tires, but now it's being done to save the plank. Because they need to run the cars ultra low to get performance the cars will wear the plank too much over the course of the race and risk being DQ'd. It's obviously worse when there is 100 kg of fuel onboard but it's worse in the braking zones when the cars pitch forward under 5g of braking.

F1 is supposed to be a sprint from start to finish and we just don't get that. I remember Australia 2004 (season opener) and Ferrari turned their engines down with 1/3rd of the race to go as this was the first year an engine had to last the entire GP weekend. Brundle complained that this wasn't what F1 was about. Sadly it has only gotten worse, horrendously worse.

 

Bridgestone never had this issue, even in 2010 when refueling got banned. I'm certain Michelin wouldn't have this issue either.

Based on 2003 and 2005, I am not a fan of tire wars. I want to see the driver or the team make the difference, not the tires because there is nothing a team can do about that if one manufacturer is significantly better than the other.

 

Max ALMOST had another Grand Slam. Max didn't get fastest lap.