Red Bull and Max Verstappen also won the United States Grand Prix after the triumph at the Suzuka circuit. For Scuderia Ferrari, Carlos Sainz’s pole position on Saturday and Charles Leclerc’s comeback in the race on Sunday were useless. Not even the enthusiasm of Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes W13 could do something.
In this moment the Red Bull simply has an edge over everyone, especially when driven by the world champion, who unlike Sergio Perez is always able to get the most out of his RB18 car.
The beginning of the race saw a lightning-fast start from Max Verstappen, compared to the unexceptional one of the Spaniard from Ferrari, who also spun in the first corner due to a contact with George Russell’s Mercedes. If the fault is entirely on the British Mercedes driver, so much so that George Russell at the end of the race went to apologize to the Spanish Ferrari driver, on his side, Carlos Sainz carried out a not-so-intelligent maneuver in that phase of the race, without keeping the outside of turn 1 but suddenly moving from right to left out of the corner to attempt an unlikely intersection of trajectories with Verstappen.
“For me it was a racing accident. If I had a race steward, I would have said: George braked late, had a brief understeer moment, but then Carlos turned quite brutally inside” – Toto Wolff said at the end of the race.
F1-75 number 55 was forced to retire due to a broken radiator, which caused the internal combustion engine temperature to rise.
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The pole position on Saturday and the data that emerged also from free practice showed a slight recovery of F1-75. Traction and competitiveness in slow corners have also improved thanks to the new floor introduced at Suzuka but the Italian car is still quite far from the F1-75 challenger admired for more than half of the 2022 Formula 1 season.
The problem of tire management in the race also remained in Austin and cannot be solved this season. “In a way, I’m satisfied because we started from 12th, so a podium is a good performance,” said Charles Leclerc, “But obviously if we analyze the race, it’s a bit disappointing. We had a little too much tire wear towards the end of the race. We will work on this and in the end it is third place, when you start from P12, it’s not that bad.” – the Monegasque driver explained, at the end of the United States Grand prix.
Unfortunately the overall gap is still quite big and makes it impossible for Ferrari to hope for any other wins this year, even though a super optimist Laurent Mekies said that the pace of the top three was very close. In reality, only Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were really close in terms of pace, even if on the hardest compound the advantage of the British Mercedes driver was important. Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was unapproachable.
The Monegasque driver lost about four tenths per lap on both Medium and Hard, which means over 20 seconds at the end of the race, had it not been for several safety car moments: “In the race we fight with the tires. But we are working on it to see results as early as next year. ”, He adds. “We will try to make the most of the last three races to give Max and Red Bull a hard time and to learn for next season. I am confident that we can do it because I know how hard we are working and I am confident that we are going in the right direction.” – Charles Leclerc concluded.
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