Who was just champion in Texas and who drove like a chump?
Monday 2 November 2015 15:41, UK
It's never straightforward with Lewis Hamilton, is it? The Mercedes driver's victory in Austin was at turns fortunate and unlucky, happenstance and inevitable. But for the Safety Car which wiped out the 10-second lead Nico Rosberg had constructed midway though the race and its second deployment after Daniil Kvyat tested the rigidity of the wall, Hamilton would surely have been made to wait for his third title until at least Mexico.
But neither was Hamilton particularly fortunate to ultimately collect the win when his team-mate inexplicably drove off the road. Having already closed to within a second of Rosberg before his first pursuit of the German was called off when the Virtual Safety Car was signalled, the world champion may not have required Rosberg's error on lap 48 to secure victory given he boasted significantly fresher tyres. We'll never know.
For its leading protagonist, the United States GP was a roller-coaster of performance and emotional tumult from start to finish. "I never for one second believed that I couldn't do it," Hamilton maintained afterwards. Perhaps he did, but if so, he must have been alone in that confident conviction.
Rating out of ten: 8
When it mattered most Nico Rosberg seemingly buckled under the pressure, slipping off the track as Hamilton closed in to hand the championship to his team-mate.
And it was all going so well until then. The German had produced a fine recovery drive to retake the lead of the race after been rudely forced off at Turn One by Hamilton - a move which saw him also fall behind the two Red Bulls.
One positive Rosberg can take away from the weekend will be once again winning the qualifying battle to take his third consecutive pole in conditions which required pristine car control to extract the maximum over that lap.
But ultimately it was another weekend of what might have been for the German, who looked despondent and understandably dejected at seeing his team-mate crowned champion again. One almost wonders if he would now benefit from a change of scenery.
Rating out of ten: 6
The reality is that only an unprecedented collapse in form from Hamilton was ever going to keep Sebastian Vettel's slim title hopes alive until the closing weeks of the season, but it was testament to the four-time champion's fighting spirit that he was still disappointed when his mathematical chances were ended on Sunday night.
In truth, he would have known as much when Ferrari decided to not get carried away by his rise to second place in the standings after Sochi and stick with the plan to take a penalty for a fifth engine at the Circuit of the Americas. Fifth therefore became 13th on the grid, but thanks to a storming first lap, Vettel was immediately into the points positions. From there, he drove steadily and error-free - in sharp contrast to his team-mate. Another third place behind the Mercedes' - his 12th podium of the season - underlines that if Ferrari repeat their step from last winter this then Vettel v Hamilton could well be the narrative from start to finish in 2016.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
There's just no stopping Max Verstappen. A superstar of the future but a star of the present already, Verstappen described his US GP as "the most complete race of the season", heady praise given the number of outstanding drives he has already delivered this year. Nevertheless, it was a justified accolade for an accomplished performance which saw him charge to fourth from the outskirts of the top 10. All this at the age of 18, and in his rookie season to boot, and at a circuit where he had never previously driven. He's special alright.
Perhaps the most remarkable detail of his race was the confirmation that it was Verstappen himself who made the decision behind his perfectly-timed change for slicks. As an exasperated Kimi Raikkonen found to his cost, not only is Verstappen precociously talented but he is also blessed with an old head on F1's youngest shoulders.
Rating out of ten: 9
The US GP was yet another race where Sergio Perez impressed and the Mexican has now rebuilt his reputation after a season at McLaren which could have ended his F1 career.
That move to Woking increasingly looks like it came too early for the now 25-year-old, who is outshining the highly-rated Nico Hulkenberg at Force India. Delivering another decent haul of points, Perez beat the German in qualifying and then kept his nose clean in the race, knowing when to fight and when to save the car to challenge on a later lap.
Rating out of ten: 7.5
If just three races ago Jenson Button was giving serious thought to F1 retirement, then his back-to-back points finishes show why McLaren were ultimately keen to retain him. According to the man himself, the team "made all the right calls" in the sometimes chaotic Austin race as they moved into the points and Jenson certainly played his part by showing that a season largely spent trudging round near the back hasn't blunted his skills in close combat - both in defence and attack.
While Fernando Alonso was still the only McLaren driver running the latest-spec Honda engine, Jenson acknowledged the rain of qualifying would have cancelled out a lot of that advantage after he was outqualified by the Spaniard by nearly a full second. However, a typically opportunistic race, during which he was one of the first to switch to dry tyres, yielded a season-best seventh on the road - which became sixth when Carlos Sainz's time penalty was applied. Button now finds himself ahead of Alonso in the standings - and none of the Spaniard's F1 team-mates, including a rookie Hamilton in 2007, have ever outscored him over a full season.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
But for his mistake in qualifying and speeding in the pitlane, which is perhaps the daftest and least forgivable mistake a driver can make, Carlos Sainz would have been in contention to be considered the star of the race at the US GP.
"You are on fire!" exclaimed his race engineer over the team radio as the Spaniard launched his charge from 20th to P6 on the road (which ended up as seventh in the final classification once his pitlane penalty had been factored in). Seventh still amounted to the young Spaniard's best F1 result to date, a useful reminder of his under-heralded talents at a time when Toro Rosso's future remains shrouded in disconcerting doubt. What a loss it would be to the sport if Verstappen and Sainz aren't on the grid next year; it can't be allowed to happen.
Rating out of ten: 8
While those around him lost their heads and got caught up in incidents or spun off in the tricky conditions, Pastor Maldonado stayed out of trouble to bring home Lotus' only points in Texas. The Venezuelan was disappointing in qualifying, the slowest of the Q2 runners and over a second behind team-mate Romain Grosjean.
Penalties for others put him 12th on the grid and from there he worked his way up to eighth as others fell off the track. But given how other drivers progressed through the field, particularly Sainz who finished ahead of Maldonado after starting out 20th, perhaps the result could have been better. That said, the most important thing in such a dramatic race was to stay out of trouble and keep circulating - virtues which Maldonado hasn't always excelled in displaying.
Rating out of ten: 7
By and large, Austin was a wretched weekend for Sauber. The C34 was hopelessly off even the midfield pace in the treacherous conditions of qualifying then their drivers then collided in the opening stages of the race. Felipe Nasr came off worse, pitting for a new front wing, and then some as Sauber rolled the dice and got it horribly wrong by switching the Brazilian to dry tyres too soon. He was back in for intermediates a lap later.
Yet for all that…Nasr ended up scoring two points for ninth place. The high attrition rate and succession of virtual and real Safety Cars are largely to thank for that, but the Brazilian should be commended for simply sticking with it.
Rating out of ten: 7
As the team's own post-race report headlined, there was 'little reward for the Bulls in Austin's wild west show', but 10th and a solitary point was particularly scant reward for Daniel Ricciardo after a drive which promised so much.
Ricciardo even led the race with a third of the Grand Prix elapsed, his wonderful opportunism on show when he capitalised on a mistake by his team-mate to pass both Daniil Kvyat and Nico Rosberg on lap 12. But after that Ricciardo's race just kept on steadily unravelling, losing pace on a drying track and losing position as the various Safety Car and Virtual Safety Cars deployments kept on failing to fall his way. It could have been worse: on another day, his collision with Nico Hulkenberg would have resulted in retirement, depriving the Aussie even of 10th place to show for his efforts. Fortunately, even the unkind sporting gods realised that would have been too harsh.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
Oh what could have been for Fernando Alonso. Delivering what he felt was "one of the best races of my career", the McLaren driver could perhaps have matched his best result of 2015 of fifth, but was left a sitting duck when the team opted not to pit him for fresh tyres as they had done for Button late in the race.
Alonso's problems became worse a few laps later when his new Honda power unit was struck by…yep, you guessed it, unreliability. Clearly fed up, the Spaniard announced to the team he would be retiring and they had to convince him to stay out while he was in the points. To add the inevitable insult to injury, Alonso duly lost the final point to Ricciardo on the last lap. But that shouldn't detract from a fine weekend for Alonso who recorded his best qualifying of the season, missing out on the top 10 by less than a tenth of a second, before producing a strong recovery drive to climb backs into a points-scoring position after being hit into a spin by Felipe Massa at Turn One on the opening lap.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
At one promising stage of Alexander Rossi's long-awaited home race debut, it looked as though the American might deliver Manor only their second points finish as cars ahead repeatedly dropped out of the running. In the end, 12th place matched the team's best result of the year, although Rossi mostly found himself in a one-car race at the back.
Having outqualified Will Stevens for the first time in his third appearance for the team, he inadvertently knocked his team-mate out of the running inside 10 seconds by hitting the sister car up the back in the melee of Turn One.
Rating out of ten: 6
It was a case of three strikes and you're out for Daniil Kvyat on a not-so-super Sunday for the Russian. On the positive side, you certainly couldn't fault his sense of adventure as he lined up - and even briefly overtook - Hamilton and Rosberg at separate points early on in the race as the Red Bulls harried the Mercedes' in the wet.
The problem was he just couldn't slow down once he got there, running straight on into the run-off area on three separate occasions. If one car was destined to head for the barriers on Sunday then it was Kvyat's and the 21-year-old delivered the coup de grace when he went wide, spun and slammed into the wall late on. It's easy to forget he remains one of the most inexperienced drivers on the grid, but when you see the mature performances - and strong results - again delivered by Red Bull's next crop of youngsters, Verstappen and Sainz, it reminds you that Kvyat could find himself under pressure in the near future if Dietrich Mateschitz doesn't pull the plug on his F1 teams.
Rating out of ten: 5
Nico Hulkenberg's race came to an untimely end when he made contact with Ricciardo at Turn 12 with 20 laps remaining.
On first viewing it appeared the German carried too much speed into the turn and that it was an opportunistic lunge up the inside. However, replays suggest his front wing was damaged before the incident, which would have contributed to the understeer which saw Nico slide across the track and into the Red Bull. The stewards were in forgiving mood afterwards but, having been out-qualified by Perez and ultimately out-scored, it will go down as another weekend where his Force India team-mate had the better of him.
Rating out of ten: 6
Marcus Ericsson felt that he could have scored points had he not been forced out of the race when his Sauber developed an electrical problem around the halfway stage. After a good start, the Swede ran as high as 11th before his first stop, but was already beginning to slip back in the drying conditions which didn't suit his car before the C34 took an early bath.
Note the thunderous report of team boss Monisha Kaltenborn as she reflected on her team's race: "We can absolutely not be satisfied with this weekend. It is not an excuse that one driver did not know the track before and we were not able to run many laps here. Almost everything that should not happen during a race happened. The result is fortunate, but we cannot count just on luck in the future." Ouch.
Rating out of ten: 6
If you were in an uncharitable mood, you could suggest Kimi Raikkonen was doing a better impersonation of Pastor Maldonado than Pastor Maldonado himself at the moment after the Ferrari driver followed up his unsuccessful ram-raid on Bottas in Sochi by ramming into the barriers in Austin. That Kimi managed to successfully plough his way out of the gravel, and not take the broken advertising board that was hovering over his car with him, was probably his most eye-catching manoeuvre of the weekend.
To his credit, Raikkonen held his hands up to "my mistake" after he hit a puddle on cold tyres and flew off the road, but that's sadly become a regular refrain from the Finn this season. Outqualified by Vettel again, this time by over a second, Raikkonen has now scored less than half of his team-mate's points.
Rating out of ten: 4
A tough day for Felipe Massa whose race was ultimately ended by a suspension problem which was largely of his own making. Ninth in qualifying was a disappointing performance as Williams once again struggled in the rain and Felipe then made a mistake under braking at the first corner, spinning his car into Alonso.
After pitting for a new nose, Massa and the Williams team gambled on taking slick tyres, but the track was nowhere near ready for the dry tyres and that lost him further ground.
A Safety Car brought Massa back into contention and he was running on the outskirts of the top 10 when he was forced to retire from the race.
Rating out of ten: 4
Although he hung about until the 10th lap, Romain Grosjean's US GP was effectively over before it had almost begun, his early retirement the consequence of the damage done to his car when it was given a whack from behind into the first corner by Valtteri Bottas.
"It's a shame," Grosjean blandly reported on the team's account of their afternoon. On his personal Twitter account, however, Romain was rather more forthcoming. "You work hard & everything goes away at the 1st corner. It pi**es you off but it's part of racing," the Frenchman rued as he spurned a Gallic shrug. "When you have a s**t race, you are glad that the next one is only in a few days." But for a driver who had started an impressive 10th on the grid, the US GP must be considered an opportunity missed.
Rating out of ten: N/A
Back-to-back retirements for the first time in Valtteri Bottas's career have halted the momentum which was beginning to nicely build up in the Finn's season. Like in Russia, his DNF here was hardly his fault, with suspension trouble which had already forced a gearbox change after qualifying recurring in the race. Still, at least the five laps he was running for were eventful: he slid into the side of Grosjean's Lotus at the start, pitted for a broken front wing, and then made a wholly premature switch to slick tyres which saw him lap half a minute off the pace.
"It's just not my day," admitted the Finn after he also missed Q3. "I think that really sums it up."
Rating out of ten: N/A
Starting two places behind his team-mate due to the grid penalties of others, Will Stevens made a great start to get ahead of Rossi on the run to Turn One. However, it all came to an abrupt end as the American then ploughed into the back of Stevens as the Briton turned into the first corner. The contact broke Stevens' rear wing and punctured his tyre forcing him to retire from the race. Manor's post-race debrief must have been eventful.
Rating out of ten: N/A
Don't miss Wednesday night's F1 Midweek Report for analysis of the US GP and all the latest talking points. Sir Patrick Head and Mark Gallagher join Natalie Pinkham in the studio at 8.30pm on Sky Sports F1.
