Max Verstappen won perhaps the most pointless System 1 race ever staged in baking Austin last night, a 19-lap sprint that is the smallest footnote in his year par excellence.
With the Red Bull star possessing wrapped up his third successive title in Qatar a fortnight ago, the remainder of the calendar is a thing of an anti-climax, but this format especially exacerbates the predicament.
Saturday of dash weekends are now devoted to the shortened arrangement – dash qualifying followed by the sprint ‘proper’. It is a day with no meaning, sandwiched indelicately in between Friday’s qualifying and today’s US Grand Prix.
Alas, the same ‘bread and circuses’ will be served up in a single of the 4 remaining races, in Sao Paulo. It requirements seeking at by the powers that be.
There was some early drama, not that the Television director realised it. All year we had waited to see Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton dueling it out at the front, and we briefly received it, but you wouldn’t have regarded it as the cameras concentrated on almost everything else for the initially three laps. I assumed they would pan in excess of to the nearby Interstate 35.
Max Verstappen, who desires no additional factors this year, got eight far more in the dash Saturday
Just after nearly operating Charles Leclerc (16) off the street, Verstappen (1) scampered away from all
He completed 8 seconds ahead of Hamilton, but he faces a very long climb from sixth on Sunday
For a extensive whilst, so the timing screens educated us, Hamilton was only 50 percent a 2nd back from Verstappen. Often it went out to a entire 2nd, and back all over again. Hamilton was cleverly using his experience on this incredible monitor, where by he has claimed five of his six US Grand Prix victories.
But pole-sitter Verstappen, who strong-armed Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc off the begin, slowly moved absent. Hamilton’s complaints that his bitter rival was working off track went unheeded.
Verstappen completed 9.4 seconds in advance of the Briton with Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari.
Hamilton’s Mercedes group-mate George Russell was handed a 5-next penalty for passing McLaren’s Oscar Piastri illegally, and completed eighth.