Ferrari were in control on Saturday of F1 US GP weekend as they edged out Red Bull in qualifying fight, while Mercedes were in no man’s land.
The Saturday in F1 US GP weekend at Circuit of the Americas saw Ferrari retain its qualifying magic to end up 1-2 where Carlos Sainz took a close pole against teammate Charles Leclerc, who has a 10-place penalty and will drop outside of Top 10.
Even though Ferrari out-qualified Red Bull, Max Verstappen wasn’t far off from Sainz, ending up only 0.092s aloof. The Dutchman tried different tactics to get temperature in his tyres but he fell short still with teammate Sergio Perez behind him in fourth.
The Mexican too has a penalty which allows both Mercedes drivers to slot themselves in the second row where Lewis Hamilton is ahead of George Russell. The team were a bit off the Top 2 teams, but they had a good gap over others in terms of qualifying pace.
Sainz: “It was, it was good. Right from Q1 I had a good feeling with a car. So yeah, it was all about building it up until Q3 and putting the lap together in Q3. Yeah, it was quite tricky out there, a lot of wind, which means in some corners you never know what to expect. You have to have faith that the car is going to stay stuck to the ground and carry a lot of speed without knowing what the wind is going to do. But yeah, a bit of an adventure out there, but it was cool. It was a lot of fun. Like always, Austin is a great track to drive and I always enjoy it. “This weekend, it hasn’t been too bad. We’ve had quite a lot of degradation, I think across the whole grid. We know when there’s a lot of degradation sometimes we struggle a bit more than Red Bull or Mercedes. So, we need to keep an eye on that. But the pace itself has been good. So, there’s nothing to not be confident to try and go for the win tomorrow and try and put together a good race. But we are also aware that with the temperatures tomorrow, it could be a tough day out there.”
Leclerc: “When you speak about such a small margin, you can always do better. But every driver can do better in Q3 when you see the lap afterwards. So, Carlos did a better job today and he deserves to be on pole. It was close. It was very, very tricky with the wind. And yeah, I won’t be starting P2 tomorrow because of the penalty, so the race will be a bit uphill for me but we’ll give it all and try to come back at the front as quickly as possible. I don’t know but I will try to make some places as quickly as possible in the first few laps so I can be in the fight and join these two guys at the front as quickly as possible.
Verstappen: “It was alright. It was very tricky today with the wind out there, especially in the first sector in the high-speed corners, when you have the tailwind on this track it makes it really tricky. But besides that, also getting the tyres in the right window wasn’t the easiest. So, we tried a few different things. I think at the end of the day, we were competitive on both strategies that we tried. Just in my first lap in Q3, I lost like three-tenths in the first corner, just hitting a few bumps and losing the rear. It was just really tricky out there. And then the second run was good in Sector One, Sector Two, we look very strong. And then I ran out of tyres a little bit in the last sector with big oversteer in the second-to-last corner. But all in all, we’re still very close to pole.
“Last race, it was the other way around where I was on pole, but it was all fine margins. And now, you know, when you don’t get it entirely together, you are P3 but at the same distance between the three cars. So yeah, I think still it’s a great result. I mean, we know that we have a quick race car, so I think anyway tomorrow we should be strong. As for a different strategy, it was just very difficult, I think, to switch on the tyres, I think, for everyone out there. I just wanted to try something different. I mean, of course, we analyse what was the best but at the end of the day, we are still in a great starting position. Nothing is lost. Nothing is won of course today. We just have to be there. And like I said before, like I know we have a quick race car so if we have a clean first lap I know that we can have a very good race.”
Russell: “I’m not too sure, to be honest. We obviously brought a couple of updates. I guess we all hoped for a little bit more, but when you take the season as an average, we probably qualified better than average. When you look at our gap to the midfield, as a percentage, the gap ahead to the gap behind, we’re probably the furthest away we’ve been from them since Zandvoort or Budapest. [So there are] some positives to take away from it, but we know Sunday is where it’s at, and I think there’s a real opportunity. It’s sort of rare that as a driver you go into the weekend more excited about the race than qualifying, because qualifying is where the car is alive and you’re going [at your] fastest, but [I’m] definitely really excited, because I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities, lots of pit stops and a lot of unknowns – that’s good news for us.”
In the lower half of the Top 10, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll showed solid pace to be the best of the rest after having a good run all-through the weekend. Teammate Sebastian Vettel was caught out by wind but made it in Q2 in a better qualifying showing from the team.
McLaren had two halves with Lando Norris just making it in Top 10 after track limits to his rival, but teammate Daniel Ricciardo suffered with his rear balance to be knocked out in Q1. It was same for Alpine where Fernando Alonso made it in but Esteban Ocon didn’t.
Even though the Spaniard ended up in the Top 10 but with the penalty, he will start from outside it, while Ocon noted that he just hasn’t managed to hook-up the car this weekend. It was better showing from both the Alfa Romeo cars but for track limits.
Valtteri Bottas retained his Top 10 finish but Zhou Gunayu had to be content with Q2, while AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly just made it in as well. Williams’ Alexander Albon didn’t feel any pace, as Haas’ Mick Schumacher got caught out in a spin for his Q1 exit.
Stroll: “The car felt really good today; we found plenty of grip and the car gave me confidence. It gives us a great starting position for tomorrow. I am really pleased for the team because we have made good progress with the car recently and we are looking stronger on Saturdays. I really enjoyed it out there, even though conditions were tricky with the wind. It looks like we will start from fifth place, with a couple of penalties for the cars ahead, which means we are in the mix to pick up a good result on Sunday.”
Bottas: “Getting into the top ten was today’s target, and we hit it. We knew the upgrades we have brought for this weekend would give us a boost and it took just a small improvement in performance to bring us back into Q3. Starting in the top ten – I believe it could be in seventh place, once all penalties are applied – is really good and it will help with our objective for tomorrow, which is scoring points. We need to score to help us in the battle for sixth in the championship, which is all-important for us. We are making progress, now we have to focus on our own race, do things properly and get some points home.”
Gasly: “I’d felt happy in the car up until Quali, we’d done a good job in the practice sessions and been in the top 10, there was definitely potential to make it to Q3 today, so that’s why I’m frustrated. I struggled with the brakes and just couldn’t get the temperature into them, so it’s a real shame. Looking to tomorrow, I don’t see why we can’t fight for the points, we will need to capitalise on every opportunity, and I am confident that we can make up ground tomorrow.”
Ricciardo: “I’m not happy with that quali. We were struggling a lot with the rear and had a few moments through the first sector. We clearly just didn’t get on top of it. We need to figure out why as it’s not giving me what I want, but tomorrow there will be opportunities to overtake and think we’ll hopefully have a bit more to show. We’ll look at it overnight and do everything we can for tomorrow’s race. We’ll see what happens.”
Ocon: “It’s been a tough day for us today. Going out of Qualifying in Q1 is always a tough one to swallow, especially as we have a competitive car, and we entered this race having qualified in fifth in Japan. The conditions were tricky today and, to be honest, I have not felt at one with the car all weekend. There is definitely work to do to find out exactly what went wrong today but, as always, I’m sure we’ll find those reasons. As for the race, we’ll give it everything to try and get back into the points.”
Schumacher: “The pace looked alright and we had a car that would’ve been able to get into Q2 with the potential for Q3, so it’s very unfortunate that we haven’t been able to show that. The spin itself, it’s very windy up there, it’s bumpy and those cars are very much on the edge. It’s unfortunate that it happened in Turn 1 because we don’t know what the potential could’ve been but just in terms of a gut feeling, it was high. I didn’t drive much in FP3, so we’ll look at the data from Kevin to be able to learn and put the car together which hopefully gives us the potential to go forwards and fight for points.”
Albon: “Today was quite unexpected if I’m honest. It was quite a tricky weekend before qualifying and the wind is really difficult at this circuit, being hard to read. Track limits are always a talking point and one gust and you’re off the track. I was really struggling for rhythm so we made some changes from FP3 to qualifying which initially didn’t feel like they were helping too much but as the session went on, we just picked up improvements, got on top of the tyres and put everything together. I’m very happy with the day so looking forward to tomorrow.”
Here’s how F1 US GP qualifying panned out