With five races left in the ’24 season, Verstappen leads Norris by 57 points on the driver’s side, and McClaren leads Red Bull by 40 points in the team championship.
AUSTIN, Texas—It has been quite a while since Ferrari finished one-two, but the team did just that on Sunday with Charles Leclerc finishing eight seconds ahead of partner Carlos Sainz. Max Verstappen and Lando Norris battled for third, with the Dutchman taking the final podium position.
Leclerc had no trouble taking his third win of the season. He had an advantage at the start when both Verstappen and Norris went wide at the first corner. The Monegasque grabbed the opportunity and took the lead for 27 laps before having to pit. Following many stops by the rest of the grid, Leclerc regained the lead and never had any threat.
“Very happy,” said Leclerc afterward. “It hadn’t been an easy weekend until now. I have been struggling with the feeling in the car, but I had the confidence in the race, and the feeling was better.”
While the top two drivers from the Scuderia seemed to have a grip on the race, Verstappen and Norris went into a battle that lasted for many laps. Verstappen held his own until just before the end of the race when Norris swung wide at turn 12 and was given a five-second penalty for his actions. That put him in fourth place at the finish, giving Verstappen a 57-point lead over the Briton with five races and two sprint events.
Verstappen admitted afterward that it was up to the stewards to have made the decision that stood, but overall, third place was deserving but difficult.
“It was quite a difficult race for me,” he said. “I didn’t have the pace to attack, which was a bit different from yesterday. I’m just understating a lot and struggling with the braking. That made the defending quite difficult because every time someone wanted to go for a move, I couldn’t break that late. It was a tough battle. I tried everything I could to keep him [Norris] behind. To be on the podium for us is a good result.”
For Norris, no matter how hard he tried, things did not work out for him Sunday. “I feel alright,” Norris admitted. “Of course, not my best race again. With the loss in turn one and just the racing at the end, yeah, clearly wasn’t enough, so that’s life. I didn’t do a good enough job but gave it a good shot, so I’m doing my best. Sometimes, my best isn’t good enough. It just wasn’t our day today.”
Norris’s teammate, Oscar Piastri, took fifth in the second McLaren. George Russell started his Mercedes from the pit lane and ended up a deserving sixth despite earning a five-second penalty. Sergio Perez had a poor day but gave his Red Bull team additional points by finishing seventh. For Haas Nico Hulkenberg, the eighth-place finish was good enough to give his Haas team enough points to overtake RB for sixth in the Constructor’s Championship by two points. Two young drivers, Liam Lawson in the RB and Williams Franco Colapinto, took ninth and tenth.
Of the twenty cars, only one retired from the race when the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton spun and beached himself in the gravel, having to retire on lap two. This brought out the safety car for the first time since the Canadian Grand Prix last June.
Leclerc was unsure how the race would go following Saturday’s sprint but felt that things finally worked out. “We said in the sprint race we weren’t scared, but we felt that the others will improve.” Leclerc stated. “But today we still had the upper hand so happy with how it went today, a one-two for the team, we couldn’t have dreamed for better.”
Formula One now moves to the second of a race triple header, moving to the Hermanos Rodriguez circuit for the Mexico City GP. Practice sessions are scheduled for Friday, October 25, at 2:30 PM and again at 6 PM, televised on ESPN2 (earlier time) and ESPNEWS (later time)
