Mark Hughes: Verstappen didn’t just win because of speed

British journalist Mark Hughes, an expert on the championship’s official website, believes that Max Verstappen won the US Grand Prix not only because of sheer speed, but also because of skilled work with rubber..

Max Verstappen’s victory at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) was determined more by his pace than by his strategy. He finished with reserves of speed which he used to bounce back after losing ground to Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc during his second pit stop due to a broken wrench.

But even before this hiccup, he felt serious pressure from Hamilton, as the window for the second set of pit stops opened shortly before the safety car took to the track twice. Before that, Verstappen brought the seven-time world champion’s gap to five seconds, but the appearance of a safety car not only equalized this advantage, Max also had to solve a difficult dilemma that involved restarts.

The question was, how hard are the tires to load, because attacking too aggressively when they haven’t warmed up to normal operating temperature will usually shorten their life considerably.

When the peloton follows the safety car at a relatively low speed, the temperature of the rubber drops noticeably, after which the tires have to try to warm up again. Verstappen’s job during restarts was complicated by the fact that this had to happen, trying to get away from Hamilton so much that he couldn’t use DRS. At the same time, riders will be allowed to use DRS after two laps.

It was at this stage of the race that not everything was in Max’s favor, but then he managed to turn the tide at the expense of speed.

At the first pit stops, Verstappen and Hamilton switched to hard rubber and by the time of the second restart she had already completed 14 laps in the Mercedes, 13 in the Red Bull car, but they were behind the safety car eight of those laps. After the restart Max attacked very aggressively and in one lap he broke away from Lewis by 1.5 seconds.

Hamilton solved other problems at the restart: as soon as it became clear that there would be no possibility to attack the opponent directly, he quietly tried to warm up the tires. Because it’s much harder to do this when you’re chasing another car closely, Lewis got a little behind – just enough to keep Sergio Perez out.

After a few laps his approach paid off as Verstappen started to struggle with the Hard compound tires.

“Probably we were more competitive on medium tires than on hard tires,” Christian Horner, head of Red Bull Racing, admitted after the race.

Max’s gap, which grew to 2 seconds, was narrowed by Lewis to 1.5 seconds, giving Mercedes the opportunity to try the tactic of “undercutting” (an earlier pit stop) at the end of lap 34. Red Bull responded by calling Verstappen into the pits later, and the situation was on the brink – Hamilton could well be ahead. But things turned out differently: Max’s pit stop was delayed due to a broken wrench.

Verstappen lost nine seconds in the pits, allowing Hamilton to take the lead and gain a noticeable advantage. It is very important that Max, who now runs on Medium tires (as opposed to Lewis, whose Mercedes was equipped with Hard), was in no rush to attack too aggressively on new tires in this situation.

“It was a kind of competition, it was important to be patient,” explained Horner. – I think Max was able to pick himself up quickly as he left the pitlane after a problematic pit stop, not overloading the tires but warming up slowly, avoiding Charles Leclerc and then Lewis started overtaking. He offered the only chance to attack and Max used it successfully – it was a decisive moment.

To take full advantage of the Red Bull car’s speed advantage on the straights, this was only possible on properly heated tires.

“With the DRS open they are about 35 km/h faster than us,” Hamilton commented after the finish. “But if we drive behind them and use DRS on the straight, we are only 22 km/h faster. Therefore, overtaking me, he began to accelerate from afar. But I think even without DRS their advantage is about 8 mph.

I think we have to be realistic. The Red Bull car was the fastest in the championship all year and remains the fastest… I still love that we started third and were able to fight well, but in terms of sheer speed the rivals were ahead all weekend .