Luke’s Weekend Take – USA GP 2023

We now head into the Saturday program where it is all about the Sprint Race with a Sprint shootout which is a shorter version of the standard qualifying and it also has mandatory tyres in each section of qualifying. In SQ1 and SQ2 all drivers must use the yellow striped medium tyres while in SQ3 all drivers must use the red striped soft tyres. The Sprint Shootout will form the grid for the Sprint race later Saturday.

In SQ1 we lose Nico Hulkenberg, Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Logan Sargeant as Tsunoda was not happy at all with his lap as he was caught in traffic and at the end of SQ1 we hear his frustration over the radio which was mostly bleeped out on the broadcast. Another radio we heard in SQ1 was Leclercs radio as he says, “And Penalty for Mr. Russell Thank you!” while we see a replay of Russell impeding him on his flying lap in SQ1 after the penultimate corner. Despite this, Leclerc still managed a time good enough for 2^nd place and only 0.002 seconds behind Verstappen.

In SQ2 we see Max Verstappen have a moment at Turn 9 as he does a 360 in his Red Bull car as he rode the kerb for a bit longer than he would have wanted and lost the rear, Max’s reactions though are very quick and manages to keep his car out of any trouble and gets back going. At the end of SQ2 we lose Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Zhou Guanyu.

SQ3 kicks off and due to the shortness of the session in SQ3 it is basically a one shot qualifying which makes it very exciting as all 10 drivers have 1 chance to pull a lap together for their final positions on the grid. Verstappen didn’t want to have a repeat of Friday qualifying so he ensured he had space on track and managed to put a time good enough for pole followed by Leclerc, Hamilton, Norris, Piastri, Sainz, Perez, Russell, Albon and Gasly form the top 10. Later that day the stewards did indeed hand a 3-grid penalty to George Russell for impeding Charles Leclerc in SQ1 which meant that Russell will now start the sprint in 11^th and Albon, Gasly and Ricciardo were pushed up 1 place forward.

It’s now time to head into the sprint and after 1 formation lap it was lights out and away they went, Max and Charles both got a good start and we see Max squeeze Leclerc into Turn 1 nearly pushing him off the track and due to this Leclerc didn’t have a good line into Turn 1 which meant that Hamilton was able to benefit from this and overtake Leclerc after turn 1 by going off track, the stewards looked at this but decided that no further action was required there.

The Mclaren of Piastri was struggling in the sprint race as by lap 3 he was under pressure from both Perez and Russell which managed to get past him and later on lap 4 Pierre Gasly also managed to get past him. The stewards later on looked at the overtake from Russell and gave him a 5 second penalty due to overtaking Piastri off the track. The Mclaren in general wasn’t performing as well on the medium tyres as it does on the softs like we saw in FP1. On lap 6 we see Hamilton keeping up with Verstappen, but he was starting to lose touch and we hear Hamilton coming on the radio reporting that Max was going over track limits.

Despite Piastri struggling with the mediums, his teammate Norris seems to have found some pace on lap 6 as well and started coming back at Carlos Sainz given that Sainz had also started on the softs, and they started to lose some performance. After a 4-lap battle and a few failed attempts, on lap 10, Norris was able to make the stick move and made it past the Ferrari of Carlose Sainz and started his charge on the other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. Sainz after Norris made it past hi did his best to stay in the DRS of Norris to protect himself from Sergio Perez who was catching up quickly but a lap later on lap 11 Perez was also able to make it past Sainz.

On lap 17 we hear Lance Stroll come on the radio saying that he has no brakes and had to pit to retire the car for safety reasons cutting his Sprint Race 2 laps shorter. Russell was not the only one to get a penalty in the sprint race as we see Zhou Guanyu get a 5 second penalty on the last lap of the sprint for going over track limits too many times.

Overall, the sprint went pretty much as expected if I am completely honest as Max Verstappen takes the chequered flag for the 3^rd time this season in a Sprint race followed by Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Sergio Perez, Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly and George Russell form the top 8 for the points. The things to take away here is that the pace of the Mercedes, Ferrari and Mclaren seems to have gotten closer to Red Bull but it’s still a bit off which means the race on Sunday will be interesting with Max starting in 6^th place. I’ll see you all in the post-race review and hopefully it will be a good one with a bit more action than we saw in the Sprint.