Reactions after the US Grand Prix: Why was Hamilton unable to overtake Verstappen?

After the US Grand Prix, the championship position is a bit clearer. Thanks to his victory, Max Verstappen managed to pull away to a 12-point gap. But Lewis Hamilton came dangerously close at the end of the race. How did the two protagonists rate their performances?

Hamilton had a slightly better start to the race, successfully getting ahead of Verstappen at the first corner. And for the next few laps, he also led the entire starting field, but was unable to pass the Red Bull driver.

On lap 11 of the US Grand Prix, Verstappen decided to take a risk and go to his mechanics this early. On the other hand, it’s no wonder he wouldn’t last much longer on track as the medium specification tyres started to overheat highly.

The Austin circuit also requires perfect tyremanagement, or perfect tyre handling. Due to the severity of the circuit, there was such a degradation of the tyres that most drivers were already putting on the hardest specification tyres during the first pit-stops.

“I wasn‘t sure about the aggressive strategy we showed, I didn’t even know if it would work,” Verstappen said in a post-race interview.

“It was exciting, we were under pressure the whole race, we didn’t know how fast Lewis could go here. In the next stint we stopped again earlier, much earlier than Lewis (Hamilton was eight laps later – ed.),” explained the Red Bull driver.

“The last stint was very long, especially in this heat. Fortunately, we managed to stay on very old tyres at the end of the race. The DRS that Haas gave me ahead of me helped me a lot.

“I tried to do the best I could. I tried to drive consistently and find the grip I needed, which was not easy given the wear on the tyres. To win here is unbelievable,” he concluded.

Despite having eight laps fresher tyres, Hamilton was unable to overtake Verstappen. The truth is that with two laps to go, the gap was less than one second and had the race been a few laps longer, the outcome of the US Grand Prix might have been different.

But objectively, we have to note that Red Bull had a very solid pace in this race, which was admitted by Hamilton himself.

“We really gave it our all, but they were just faster than us this weekend. I don’t know exactly why, they just seemed to work the rear of the car better, it was less slippery on the track,” Hamilton said at the press conference.

He’s right that Mercedes struggled with understeer in Austin. This was particularly evident at Turn 11, where Hamilton missed the apex several times during the race.

The seven-time world champion also said he was happy for a very good start to the race. “I don’t even know what we could have done better or differently today. I think we have to sit down and talk with the team. Anyway, we did a good job today,” Hamilton continued his comments.

In the next two races we will look at circuits where Red Bull can be expected to be a very strong team. We will undoubtedly have a tough battle for the title in the rest of the season.

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