On the one hand, for Scuderia Ferrari and Charles Leclerc there was a great comeback in the United States Grand Prix and an almost unexpected dream of victory, which was difficult to believe ahead of the Austin event, given the fact that the Monegasque driver had to start from P12 due to a grid penalty for replacing power unit components.
On the other hand, a potential win that was thrown away on the first lap due to George Russell, who collided with the Ferrari F1-75 car of Carlos Sainz and forced the Spanish driver to retire. Austin’s Sunday experienced extremes for the Maranello team. Poleman Carlos Sainz got off to a very bad start and was hit at the first corner by George Russell, while Charles Leclerc – for who a top five finish was expected – instead came close to fighting for victory at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin despite starting from the 12th position: the Monegasque was able to do this by taking advantage of a free stop under the Safety Car and Max Verstappen’s second pit stop to overtake the Dutchman, as Red Bull encountered problems in the pits and lost more than ten seconds.
Sadly once again the Dutchman much more pace and therefore overtook first the Ferrari driver and then Lewis Hamilton to win the United States Grand Prix. Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies shares his thoughts on his drivers’ race in Austin:
“It’s a shame. Losing the car from pole position on the first lap is a difficult thing to accept but we can do little, Russell came to apologize to the whole team and especially to Carlos. Max had a small advantage over us in the race, in fact after the second pit stop despite being behind he passed us on the track: having said that we stayed with him, there is still a small advantage that Red Bull has over us certainly in terms of race pace, I think the margin was quite small but they are still the fastest in these conditions.” – the Frenchman told Sky Sport F1 at the end of the United States Grand Prix.
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“Did Charles Leclerc want more than third place? Well yes, for various reasons we ended up with Max Verstappen behind us, they had a long pit stop and before that we waited for a Safety Car that arrived. Charles and Max had a good battle: Charles pushed hard, stayed with him for many laps and then paid the price with tire degradation. In the pit stops we made a lot of progress, I can’t comment on the problems of the others but I’m not a surprise. Mistakes happen.” – Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies concluded.
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