Having lamented in recent rounds that he’d been missing out on pole positions by the barest of margins, Carlos Sainz was finally able to turn the tables in the United States.
Sainz pipped teammate Charles Leclerc by just 0.065 seconds to claim his third career pole, putting him in place to lead Ferrari’s charge for victory in Texas with the Monegasque sent down the grid with an engine penalty.
The constructors championship is nominally at stake — Ferrari needs to outscore Red Bull Racing by an improbably 19 points to take the fight to Mexico next weekend — but the Scuderia is targeting sending off this season on a high rather than an unlikely delaying of its rival’s coronation.
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Whether it can do it is another question.
The grid is mixed, and after a disrupted weekend of practice, there’s considerable uncertainty about who exactly will hold the upper hand in the race.
Will this be a straight fight between Sainz and Max Verstappen from the front row, or can Mercedes play a role on a cautiously optimistic weekend? And what can the drivers starting out of position hope to achieve?
FERRARI FASTEST BUT NOT OPTIMISTIC
Ferrari had never taken a pole position at the Circuit of the Americas and has won this race just once in its 10-year history. The importance of this Ferrari milestone shouldn’t be understated.
True, the Scuderia has been the dominant qualifying car all season, particularly in Leclerc’s hands but often with Sainz not far behind, but with Verstappen and Red Bull Racing in such fine fettle, taking a front-row lockout, albeit before penalties, is no mean feat.
But there are some significant caveats to be considered before Ferrari fans get too excited.
The first is that the exercising of the SF-75’s single-lap pace has tended to come at the expense of its race pace. The car has taken 12 poles but Leclerc and Sainz have just four wins between them for the season.
The Ferrari car has struggled for race pace, in part because of a nagging problem with tyre wear, particularly on the front axle. It’s been debilitating for strategy, which is where the team’s often fallen over.
Given the high ambient and track temperatures in Austin, that’s still expected to be a limiting factor in the team’s execution.
“I’m not going to lie, I think Red Bull are still favourites,” Sainz admitted. “I think they normally have the better race pace.
“They normally get us in the race because Max does a great job and Red Bull has a very good car in race trim.
“We’re going to do everything we can to try and stay ahead tomorrow, and to win the race would be an amazing way to start these last four races.”
But there’s also a historical quirk Sainz will need to contend with to give himself a shot at overcoming his own pessimism.
In four of the last six races at COTA the driver starting second has led at the end of the first lap. Tomorrow it’ll be Verstappen starting alongside Sainz on the front row.
Pole position here is on the outside — the ideal racing line — but the tight hairpin first turn, coming off an uphill braking zone, lends itself to a dive down the inside by a driver getting a decent start from second place.
Despite a first COTA pole, the odds are seemingly stacked against Sainz and Ferrari all the same.
MERCEDES EXPECTED MORE BUT ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Part of the reason Ferrari has such a poor record at this circuit is because most teams that aren’t Mercedes have struggled to attain success here.
The German marque has dominated this circuit for most of the turbo-hybrid era, taking every pole and winning five races between 2014 and 2019. It’s been one of the team’s strongest circuits and one of Lewis Hamilton’s favourites, the Briton having won five times in Austin.
It’s a track the team has been quietly hopeful of performing well at again this season despite the W13’s troubles.
In part that’s because the broad combination of corners gives it something to work with and because the bumps are significant less severe than they have been in recent years.
It’s also because the team has brought its final major upgrade package for the year to this track, which it hoped would bring it closer into the mix.
And it did. Sort of.
Hamilton and George Russell will start third and fourth with a crack at the podium, but they qualified fifth and sixth and were around 0.6 seconds off pole and 0.3 seconds behind Sergio Perez in fourth.
In reality it’s a very status quo kind of result.
Ricciardo planning his get back season | 00:51
“I thought we were closer if I’m really honest,” Hamilton said. “I really struggled with the car in this session.
“I’m praying it’s going to be better tomorrow. I’m really just hopeful that if we can hold onto [Sainz and Verstappen], at least keep them in distance, that would be awesome, because then strategy can come into play.
“But I think they’re too quick.”
Part of Hamilton’s problems seemed to come from the track cooling substantially between FP3 and qualifying, which was run near sunset, given the W13 is easygoing with its tyres. That may not be a problem in the race, which is run in the middle of the afternoon.
There’s also the matter of the new front wing the team hasn’t been allowed to run, with the FIA being of the opinion that it’s illegal. The team will redesign it for the next race in Mexico.
It was a double blow for the team given the wing was also a major weight-saver, which is essentially free lap time the car is now without.
But it’s been an overall positive weekend for the team, which is increasingly confident it’s on the right track — it wouldn’t be spending money on major updates were it not — and with both cars in the top four, it has a strategic advantage in what’s usually a finely balanced grand prix.
“It’s sort of rare that as a driver you go into the weekend more excited about the race than qualifying, because qualifying is where the car is alive and you’re going fastest,” Russell said.
“But I’m definitely really excited, because I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities, lots of pit stops and a lot of unknowns. That’s good news for us.”
McLAREN SPIES P4 ADVANTAGE AFTER DIFFICULT DAY FOR ALPINE
Alpine leads McLaren by 13 points in the battle for fourth in the constructors standings, but neither French car will start in the top 10.
Fernando Alonso was ninth quickest, one place behind Lando Norris, but a five-place penalty will drop him deep into the pack to 14th.
Miller crashes yet again! | 00:43
Norris, on the other hand, is the beneficiary of Leclerc and Perez’s penalties ahead of him, bumping him up from eighth to sixth.
Esteban Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo were both shock eliminations in Q1, leaving them unlikely to score points.
If the cars finish where they start Norris, will more than half the difference between the two teams with three rounds to run.
Working in Norris’s favour is that the midfield isn’t so clearly segmented in pace such that Alonso would be expected to make up ground easily.
Aston Martin — Lance Stroll starts fifth and Sebastian Vettel starts 10th — are looking genuinely competitive this weekend, and even if they’re not quite in the same league as Alpine and McLaren, they should be quick enough to be disruptive.
Alfa Romeo is also enjoying a competitive weekend, with Valtteri Bottas up to seventh on the grid. Zhou Guanyu would’ve joined him in Q3 had he not had his fastest Q2 lap deleted for fractionally exceeding track limits; he’ll start 19th with a five-place grid penalty for an engine change.
Having drivers charging through the field — Perez from ninth Leclerc from 12th, Alonso from 14th — will also throw a strategic curve ball into the calculations of the midfielders hoping to navigate their way through the pack.
So many times this season the battle for fourth has looked decided, but the United States Grand Prix has the potential to be yet another twist in the story.
PADDOCK PAYS TRIBUTES TO DIETRICH MATESCHITZ
The paddock was subdued on Saturday with the news that Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz had died at the age of 78.
Mateschitz was renowned as the driving force behind Red Bull, which he co-founded with the drink’s original Thai creator, Chaleo Yoovidhya, in the 1980s. Within 20 years both were multibillionaires.
Part of the Red Bull story was its expansion into extreme sports via athlete sponsorship, and with an interest in motorsport, Mateschitz path soon intersected with Formula 1.
By 2004 Mateschitz had an appetite to become a major player in the sport and bought the Jaguar team in Milton Keynes, turning it into Red Bull Racing. The following year he bought Minardi, which became Toro Rosso and then AlphaTauri.
Around that time he also bought the former Österreichring, renovating it and rebranding it as the Red Bull Ring, which he returned to the F1 calendar in 2014.
Despite his significant influence in the sport given his considerable stake, Mateschitz has always cut a deliberately low-profile figure, rarely appearing publicly or giving interviews, preferring instead to let the specialist operations speak for themselves via the experts put in place to run them.
“So many of us have to be so grateful to him for the opportunities he provided and the vision that he had, the strength of character and never being afraid to chase your dreams,” Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports.
“That‘s what he did here in Formula 1, proving that you can make a difference. We’re just incredibly grateful.”
Speaking after missing out pole, Verstappen credited Mateschitz as a key architect of his F1 career.
“For us it was I think a tough entry to qualifying, and then you don’t really care about the result as well, it doesn’t matter, because we’re more about what happened today and also what he has meant to everyone within the team, the whole team, what he has built up, the company itself, Red Bull and personally to me,” he said.
“Because, without him, I wouldn’t be sitting here today and I wouldn’t have had the success I’ve had, so it’s incredibly tough for everyone in the team.
“Luckily I got to see him a couple of weeks back so we could spend a little bit of time together. But it’s still a tough day.”
Sergio Perez said he hoped to help bring home the constructors championship this weekend to honour the team’s late owner.
“I met him or twice and he was a great human being — super happy, really excited — and what he created, the brand that he has created, and not only that, his passion for the sport, I think he has really made a massive difference to the world,” he said.
“I really hope that tomorrow we can do everything to be crowned champions, because it will be a nice day to do that.”
F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said Mateschitz was “a hugely respected and much-loved member of the Formula 1 family”.
“He was an incredibly visionary entrepreneur and a man who helped to transform out sport,” he said.
“I will miss him greatly, as will the whole community in Formula 1, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and the Red Bull and AlphaTauri teams at this very sad time.”
