@Max33Verstappen fends-off @LewisHamilton to claim #USGP victory. #F1

Verstappen US GP victory – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen resisted pressure from a charging Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton to clinch victory at the US GP and extended his Driver’s Championship lead.

 

 

Red Bull had to use the undercut strategy to get Verstappen back in the lead, which meant Mercedes later left Hamilton out longer to set up an attempt to snatch the win in the dying stages.

 

When the 56 lap US GP began, pole-sitter Verstappen and Hamilton launched closely alongside each other, but the latter got better acceleration and the duo were almost immediately side-by-side as they ran down to the uphill turn one left-hander.

 

Verstappen squeezed Hamilton over the pit-lane exit line to the inside edge of the circuit, but the Mercedes driver had the line and was able to grab the lead at the first corner apex.

 

 

The Dutchman held on around the outside line, but was forced wide off the circuit by Hamilton, who pulled clear into the lead as Red Bull’s Sergio Perez charged alongside team-mate Verstappen, who had rejoined from off the track.

 

Perez conceded second place to his team-mate into the left-hand turn three that begins the Esses in sector one as the field charged after the front-runners – only Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon well behind at the back after F1’s two Canadians tangled at turn one with the former spun around by the Williams.

 

The top three shot clear of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc who was in fourth place – the trio were running in the high 1:41’s bracket whilst the rest were a second or more slower in the early stages of the Grand Prix.

 

Hamilton and Verstappen also pulled clear of Perez, with the leader holding a gap of just under a second throughout the opening ten tours – during which Verstappen insisted to his Red Bull team that he had pace and that his championship rival was “sliding a lot”.

 

Hamilton confirmed to Mercedes that Verstappen was indeed quicker, but, as the duo moved further clear of Perez when the Mexican fell back into the 1:42’s, he continued to hold the advantage.

 

On the tenth lap, Verstappen told Red Bull he was sliding around a lot more and not going as quick as he was before and at the end of the tour, he was called in to swap the C3 yellow-branded medium compounds, which all the leaders had started on for the more durable C2 white side-walled hards.

 

Verstappen made short work of former team-mate and McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo, running behind Leclerc, on his out-lap, with Mercedes opting to leave Hamilton out and not covering his rival.

 

With Verstappen posting a series of fastest laps, the Dutchman urged his Red Bull squad to use Perez’s strategy aggressively with another undercut in an attempt to stop Mercedes leaving him over for another initial stint.

 

When Red Bull did that by pitting Perez for another set of the mediums at the end of the 12^th tour, Hamilton was then brought in at the end of the next tour, with Verstappen taking back the lead easily when the Mercedes emerged.

 

Verstappen found himself with a six second gap that he kept over the next stage of the Grand Prix – with the leaders lapping in the high 1:40’s – with Perez ten seconds behind in third place.

 

Past the 20^th lap mark, Hamilton began to turn the wick up as he picked up his pace to hit the low 1:40’s, which rapidly ate into Verstappen’s lead.

 

The Red Bull driver’s advantage was soon under three seconds as Hamilton’s three-lap tyre life off set benefit began to pay off, with Verstappen slipping back into the 1:41’s as he made his way through the tailenders.

 

But Verstappen responded, gaining back a heap of time just before the deployment of the virtual safety car to remove a piece of debris at the turn 16 entry – the multi-corner sequence leading to the circuit’s final turns.

 

Red Bull once again went aggressive with Verstappen’s strategy, calling him in for another set of hards at the end of the 29^th tour, with Mercedes immediately telling Hamilton his response to the Milton-Keynes based-outfit was that he would be running longer – Perez now no longer a threat from behind.

 

Hamilton remained out for an extra eight tours after Verstappen stopped a final time, with Mercedes setting up a big tyre advantage compared to the Dutchman for the end of the Grand Prix.

 

When Hamilton emerged from the pits on lap 38, he had an 8.7 second gap to hunt down over 18 tours and during the early stint of the charge, the seven-time world champion made small gains on his title-rival, but then upped his pace to hit the 1:38’s bracket as Verstappen struggled to pass traffic, with his lead coming down to 4.8 seconds at the end of the 42^nd tour.

 

Once the pairing both cleared the traffic, with Hamilton evidently held up less, Verstappen’s gap continued to drop, now at a steadier rate, with his team telling him to make sure he had enough tyre life left to resist Hamilton’s charge coming into DRS range at the end of the Grand Prix.

 

At the 50^th tour, Verstappen’s lead was under two seconds for the first time, but Hamilton’s gains on the Red Bull driver were getting smaller again as he arrived at the RB16B’s turbulent air.

 

The gap stabilised before Hamilton closed in with three laps remaining – Verstappen’s advantage barely a second and with Mick Schumacher’s Haas VF-21 suddenly an obstacle as he came to overlap the German for a second time.

 

But although Hamilton was just 0.8 seconds behind at the beginning of the final lap, Verstappen had DRS assistance down the main-straight as he had been in the detection zone following the Haas at the end of the second-to-last tour.

 

That helped the Dutchman to pull clear just enough from Hamilton’s threat to not let the Briton have DRS activation or make a move in the fight, with Verstappen claiming the US GP victory by 1.333 seconds and extended his championship lead to 12 points.

 

Perez finished 42.223 seconds behind his Red Bull team-mate in third, with Leclerc only 10 seconds behind the Mexican in fourth.

 

Fifth place belonged to McLaren’s Ricciardo after he clashed with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz in the late stages of the race – the duo and Lando Norris also engaged in a thrilling battle on the opening tour – whilst Sainz fell behind Bottas late on.

 

Norris came home eighth behind his former McLaren team-mate, with AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda who held off Bottas for several laps at the halfway point of the Grand Prix with a series of solid defensive moves, finishing ninth.

 

Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel rose from the back of the field after taking on a new power-train to claim the final points place after his former Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen spun his Alfa Romeo out of tenth place with a dramatic spin at the bumpy and long turn six right with three tours remaining.

 

Alfa Romeo Racing’s Antonio Giovinazzi finished 11^th and ahead of the aforementioned Stroll and team-mate Raikkonen who were 12^th and 13^th respectively.

 

Williams Racing’s George Russell and Nicholas Latifi followed next in 14^th and 15^th whilst the Haas F1 Team pairing of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin brought up the rear and two laps down on the leaders.

 

The only-non finishers of the racers were the Alpine F1 Team duo, with Alpine’s Ocon retiring in the pits with an unspecified issue with the rear of his A521 racer, and later Fernando Alonso after his rear wing “broke up.”

 

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly was the first retirement when his Honda-powered AT02 racer’s suspension was damaged on lap 12.

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2021 US GP – The Top Three

 

 

2021 US GP Winner – Max Verstappen, #33, Red Bull Racing-Honda, RB16B:

“The tyre wear is quite hard at this track. We went aggressive, I wasn’t sure it was going to work but super happy. It’s amazing to be here, hopefully we can do this for many years to come.”

 

2^nd Place – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W12 EQ Performance:

“Firstly. congratulations to Max, they did a great job today. What a great crowd, to perform in front of you guys in such an honour. I think this is definitely our acceptance into the US!”

 

3^rd Place – Sergio Perez, #11, Red Bull Racing-Honda, RB16B:

“Since Lap 1, I had no water, I couldn’t drink at all. By my second stint I was finding it pretty difficult.“

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Formula 1 Aramco United States Grand Prix 2021 Race Results Classification (56 Laps)

 

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	33	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING HONDA	56	1:34:36.552	25
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	56	+1.333s	19
3	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING HONDA	56	+42.223s	15
4	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	56	+52.246s	12
5	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	56	+76.854s	10
6	77	Valtteri Bottas	MERCEDES	56	+80.128s	8
7	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	56	+83.545s	6
8	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	56	+84.395s	4
9	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI HONDA	55	+1 lap	2
10	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	55	+1 lap	1
11	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	55	+1 lap	0
12	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	55	+1 lap	0
13	7	Kimi Räikkönen	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	55	+1 lap	0
14	63	George Russell	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	55	+1 lap	0
15	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	55	+1 lap	0
16	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	54	+2 laps	0
17	9	Nikita Mazepin	HAAS FERRARI	54	+2 laps	0
NC	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	49	DNF	0
NC	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	40	DNF	0
NC	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI HONDA	14	DNF	0

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2021/races/1102/united-states/race-result.html

 

Click here for the Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings

 

Round 18 of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship returns to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, Mexico for the Formula 1 Gran Premio La Ciudad De Mexico 2021 from Friday November 5-Sunday November 7.

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#USGP Qualifying: @Max33Verstappen beats @LewisHamilton to pole. #F1

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