The Saturday in F1 US GP ended up being hectic especially in the sprint race with the collision, as Max Verstappen dominated the proceedings when rivals stuttered.
It ended up being a hectic run on Saturday in F1 US GP at Circuit of the Americas, especially due to the sprint race incident which took out McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri along with Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, with Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg also involved.
Zak Brown laid blame on the German, but after review, he took back his words. Both Norris and Piastri lost ground to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, as Norris was able to rescue something with a second place finish in F1 qualifying. Piastri couldn’t as much and found himself to be only sixth.
Both noted that they will review the Lap 1 incident after the F1 US GP, with all eyes on salvaging against Verstappen as much. The Dutchman said that they fine-tuned the car after sprint which helped it to be better and he hopes it can come through in the main race where he expects McLaren to challenge.
Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda was knocked out in Q2 but not without another spat with Visa Cash App RB’s Liam Lawson. In fact, he noted of Alpine too disrupting his lap. The Japanese made the most in the F1 sprint race to finish in points, despite dragging Hulkenberg’s front wing.
Ferrari benefitted from the incident as well, with Lewis Hamilton finishing ahead of Charles Leclerc. The roles reversed in F1 qualifying where the Monegasque managed to secure a Top 3 finish. He alluded to changes in the car, which helped and hopes it is translated in the grand prix.
Hamilton felt better with the process to secure a Top 5 finish in F1 qualifying and eyes a podium, with target on Mercedes’ George Russell. The Brit expected a bit more after finishing second in sprint. Teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli made it in Q3, but couldn’t get more than seventh in the end.
Verstappen: “The sprint race was OK. Yeah, the start was good. I looked in my mirror and I could see immediately that I didn’t really need to defend. So it was more about driving a bit in the middle because Turn 1 is very wide. I just tried to do my normal line, normal corner. Then, of course, I looked again in the mirror, and suddenly there were some cars turned around. It’s that type of corner in the start—you can gain a lot of positions if you do it well, but at the same time, it’s a risky corner to try and get positions. I think the overall pace throughout the race, I expected it to be a little bit better. So that’s something we need to work on, especially if the McLarens are not out on lap one tomorrow. I do think that if they would have raced today, it would have been very tough to keep them behind.
“So that is something that, yeah, for tomorrow, we need to work on. But nevertheless, I take it. We’ll take the points. It’s positive. And now we just need to look ahead, how we can improve a little bit the pace. It was, I think, a good qualifying then. I think the conditions weren’t easy, with stronger winds today compared to yesterday. So, Sector 1, yeah, it was a bit harder to be consistent because the car was moving around everywhere. But I guess everyone, of course, is in the same boat with that. And then, yeah, just Q1, Q2, just trying to progress every time with the lap time. I didn’t feel like in Q3 the track was actually any better — maybe slightly worse, actually, I think for a lot of people. But, yeah, just trying to find a little bit more pace. And luckily it was there in the car, so just seemed a little step forward compared to yesterday’s qualifying.
“I hope it’s (changes) better for tomorrow. It’s difficult to say right now what will happen, of course, also tomorrow. But at least I felt a bit happier with the car compared to yesterday’s qualifying, and I hope that’s enough then for the race tomorrow. As for final lap miss, there were just some people in front that were just leaving like ten seconds, easily. So, yeah, then you just run out of time. Then I had two cars in front of me. They were racing as well. I think they set purple sectors on the out lap. Yeah. That’s not ideal. So, yeah, we just ran out of time.”
Russell: “Yeah, obviously I just stayed out of trouble at Turn 1 in sprint and, yeah, fought hard in those first laps after the Safety Car to try and get past Max. Obviously I had half a chance. I knew that would probably be my last chance, so yeah, sent it. Obviously I just couldn’t quite make the corner. But, yeah, P2. I think similar to what Max said, it was decent, it was okay. But if the McLarens were there, I think they’d have probably been ahead of us. In terms of the move, I knew Max—well, I saw Max was struggling a little bit, and I was just giving absolutely everything. And I knew that I would probably deg a little bit more, whereas when you’re in the lead, you’re probably trying to manage the tyres a bit better. He had a bit of a snap out of the previous corner, so I just thought, you know what, this is my only chance.
“There was a nice headwind in that corner, so I thought I could make it stick. But I was too far back. I’m glad I tried it as opposed to just sitting there and still finishing in the same place. It is annoying to end the day just 0.026s away from being on the front-row and two positions higher up the grid. P4 is still a solid result but when it is as close as that, you always feel like you could have done just a little bit more. That said, I was happy with my lap. It wasn’t the perfect effort, but I managed to extract a lot of performance from the car and when I crossed the line, I felt that I had done a decent job. Getting P2 would have been a good way to end the day, particularly having finished there in the Sprint this morning, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Norris: “Too difficult. I mean, comparing to yesterday… Yesterday, I was pretty happy with everything and things came a bit easier. Today, not so much. And I think that was clear already in Q1, Q2, and Q3. So, yeah, I guess some stuff for us to look into why we probably struggled a bit more compared to yesterday, like Max said. And we know that the wind and temperature and stuff was a little bit different. So, yeah, some things for us to figure out. Not my best lap — I said that on the radio after. So, yeah, just not a great session. So to be P2 I’m still pretty happy with. I think quite a bit, honestly, because we’ve not done — I don’t think I’ve done more than three laps in a row and not more than, like, 40 kilos of fuel. So, I have no idea.
“We don’t know if it’s going to be amazing or terrible, certainly around here because it’s so difficult with the bumps and the bottoming and the winds. It’s unpredictable. So, we were hoping to learn a lot this morning in the Sprint, in terms of how the car set-up was going to be from quali to race and how it changes and the things that are good and bad. And then hopefully make tweaks for this quali for the race tomorrow. But obviously that didn’t go to plan. So, yeah, we’re certainly on the back foot, but I guess we will try not to use that as an excuse tomorrow. I mean, it’s a challenging track. I think Turn 1 is a challenge in itself. You know, it’s never easy, but I think there are quite common situations that cause crashes over the last few years, and one of them happened again today. So, yeah, I think you just have to be aware of what happens on different tracks, different Turn 1s.
“That’s part of our job as drivers. But, I mean, as team-mates and as a team, we don’t want these things to happen. We’ve said that every single time, and it’s the truth. So, yeah, like I said, we’ll review it and keep going racing. In terms of incident, I mean, like all things we do as a team, it’ll be reviewed. I think it probably takes a bit more time to understand everything, and certainly just before qualifying and probably before the race tomorrow is not the best time. So, yeah, I think things will be reviewed to just understand a few more things. But apart from that, you know, it’s nothing I can do. Like, I just have to crack on and do my own thing. I was pretty unlucky to not have a chance to race earlier. And, yeah, that’s not just hurt me yesterday or today, but also for the race tomorrow in terms of preparation. So, yeah, it was a difficult time. But I said what I said, and I won’t add any more.”
Leclerc: “Well, we’ve changed a few things, but it’s not like there’s been something that we’ve done a massive change with. It was all about fine tuning. There’s something more specific that I’ve changed on my side, which I think went towards my driving style a little bit and maybe that helped. But a swing of performance like from yesterday to today is still to be understood, to be completely honest. There was more wind. We know that with our car, this is normally a strong point, which probably helped us today. But again, it’s a big swing of performance, so we still need to understand. I don’t know. A good start like last year probably will help with the free air, but I don’t think that we quite have that pace in the car. But never say never. I think last year, we were very surprised once we got into free air to see the amount of pace there was in the car. I hope we can have the same surprise tomorrow, but for now, it seems unlikely.”
Piastri: “Yeah, it has been. I think today…just, I mean just getting into rhythm with the car. It’s a track that is tough and you need a lot of confidence on. There’s a lot of corners to make you pay for it if you don’t have that feeling. I feel like yesterday there were a few relatively clear opportunities to try and find [time]. But today I felt like my laps were maybe not the best laps of my life, but in line with laps I’ve done before. It’s just unfortunate the lap time didn’t come. No, I don’t think so [there was any issues with repairs]. The car was back in one piece and as far as I’m aware, set up how we intended.
“It all felt normal, it’s just the kind of behaviour that we’ve had a couple of times through the season came out to play again today. So, I don’t it was necessarily from this morning. I think for me, it’s a racing incident [in sprint]. I was a long way away from the apex. And I think the cars behind were going in pretty deep into the corner. So, could I have done something a bit different? Maybe, yes, but that different thing would have been to potentially let two or three cars go by. So, can’t just drive around the outside of the track and let everyone use up all the space. I think you’re racing incident is fair. I’m not sure I share the same opinion about Singapore. I feel like it was a good weekend, apart from, obviously the race results. I think here, yes, it’s been a struggle for me. I don’t feel like there’s been anything like I’ve made any major mistakes, or from a driving side of things, it’s just not clicked.
“It’s not been so much of overdriving, it’s just been that I haven’t felt comfortable with the car, really. So, I think that’s been the story of this weekend, but I don’t think it’s been the story in the last few. For the race, just try and have a good start and see how many places we can make really, that’s the best thing I can try and do. I have started in that position before in my career, just try and do what I do everytime which is take the opportunities that are there, assess the risks that there are and ultimately just try and do my best, that’s all I can do.”
Hamilton: “I definitely had that tenth within the lap. We made some improvements in terms of our processes. Going into this qualifying session, we tried something different and it really, really worked. So I’m really proud of the team for being open and making the changes. Set-up-wise, I had big oversteer yesterday throughout [Sprint] qualifying, which made it really difficult for us going off. In this session, I started with massive understeer, so I was basically trying to dial that out. I added like eight holes in the front wing. It wasn’t until the last run I had the front wing, but you kind of needed that in the first run so you can get that confidence in the car. It’s just how we execute the session.
“It’s how we communicate. It’s the calm approach. It’s the timing that we go out. It’s the temperature of our tyres, all those sorts of things. We just executed it much better all together. I had a lot of understeer in the race, so it was highly unlikely I would have been able to get close and overtake in the race. Given that we were both in the same tyre, I think he had a lot more front wing than me, so it was highly unlikely. But he made the mistake at the end of the day and I was able to capitalise. He did luck out at the start by getting past because I was in the middle of the crash. He kind of drove around it, so he was fortunate to have passed me in the first place. It’s quite difficult to overtake here, tyres are overheating. [I] definitely learnt about to where to put the car.
“In general today, a bit more where to put the car but overall, I’ve been happy throughout the weekend. I think qualifying I wasn’t as strong as I have been all weekend. As I said, I had massive understeer, I’ve just had too much lock and it’s killed the tyres. It [podium] is. I got to get past George tomorrow, that’s the key, because they are fast as always, I mean he’s giving Max pressure, so they are always around. But those guys have got upgrades, Red Bull – I don’t know about McLaren – but definitely Mercedes, which we haven’t. Of course that’s where we are, it is given, that’s the case but I am pretty grateful, I think the car balance should be better tomorrow, I hope we can fight a bit.”
Tsunoda: “Today was okay, had a good start, braking into Turn 1 after that, somehow the cars in the front were spread out and I was P7, so it was good. I was able to outbrake some cars in Turn 1 and before the crash, I was able to overtake 3-4 cars, I was able to be in that position, it was worth taking the risk. Yeah, it is what it is, in my view, I saw he was going very, very slow in Turn 11, kind of waiting for me, middle of the corner. So not ideal. But it is more like in the second push, I got interrupted by Alpine which was much bigger than that, so until then I had enough pace to go through to Q3 and I lost everything from that – so it was very frustrating.
“I don’t know [if Liam did purposely], I am not in his brain and I don’t want to say in front of the mic. I’ll mention it [to him], lets see how he takes it. We have talked enough about it in previous rounds. Since Monza or whatever. But it’s always like that. I have to always be careful, that’s it. I had little bit too much luck with the double front wing until Turn 11, I thought it was going to create a better rotation but actually it was not, so yeah, I lost one position with that.”
The Top 10 featured Williams’ Carlos Sainz after a Top 3 finish in F1 sprint. The Spaniard felt good enough in the car and extracted more than teammate Alexander Albon, who was knocked out in Q1. He noted of changes made to the car, which made it better on the balance side.
But with lack of laps under its belt, Albon wasn’t able to fine-tune it and made a silly error to lose out on track limits. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was satisfied as the metric of Top 8 was more or less achieved with another Q3 run. The Spaniard didn’t blame anyone for the sprint incident.
Teammate Lance Stroll accepted blame for his incident with Haas’ Esteban Ocon and duly apologised. The Frenchman did not fare as well in F1 qualifying as opposed to Oliver Bearman, who ended up in Q3. The Brit was annoyed by the 10s time penalty, though, that cost him points in sprint.
He thought he got a race ban but understood that there is no penalty points associated with it. Sauber’s Hulkenberg missed out on Top 10 eventually, after mistake on his final attempt. He expanded on the F1 sprint incident, where he had nowhere to go after Piastri’s cutback.
His teammate Gabriel Bortoleto admitted to no confidence around the COTA circuit. Both Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto made it in Q2, but the latter was still not happy. The Frenchman felt better, but didn’t understand the extreme complaints from Tsunoda of disrupting the lap.
Even Lawson didn’t pay much attention to the complaints of Tsunoda after another F1 qualifying allegation. Teammate Isack Hadjar admitted to mistake in his first attempt to lose out eventually, as both felt the pace of Visa Cash App RB to be much better than the result.
Sainz: “Yep. Good race, honestly. I had a pretty average, pretty poor start. I got distracted with one thing and I couldn’t get off the line well, which forced me to take the outside line into Turn 1. A bit like George, I braked really late on the outside because you have all the clean air and the headwind to brake as late as you want. But then I realised, looking left, that the guys on the inside had braked as late as the guys that were almost already outbraking ourselves on the outside. So, yeah, I kind of thought there was going to be contact there because people braked really late on the inside, and there were a lot of cars on the inside.
“I just took basically evasive action going all the way around the outside. I thought at some point I was going to go in the gravel with how much I had to avoid the accident. And then suddenly, I found myself in P3. Surprised that we could hold the Ferraris behind, especially because at some point, they were super quick, catching on me. But then once I got—I think Lewis was 1.2, 1.4 seconds—and he stopped making the progress, and I could keep them at a comfortable margin. We need to improve a bit the race pace, especially low speed feels like we have a bit of margin to improve, hopefully for tomorrow. But the car has been giving me confidence all weekend, and hopefully we can keep building on it because it’s been a very solid weekend, given the fact that we missed practice, and we still managed to put it P7 on the grid and podium today. T
“oday was another good day and I’m happy with my laps. We executed a clean session and pace felt strong. Unfortunately the wind picked up for the last part of qualifying and our car becomes a bit trickier to drive, so overall P9 was more or less our spot today. I have confidence on my race pace for tomorrow so I hope to give these great fans another exciting race to cheer on.”
Bearman: “I don’t know what you guys thought, but I felt pretty hard done by this morning. Actually, I thought I had a race ban for a minute, so I was really, really annoyed. Obviously, with everything that happened, I had a bit of fire in me. With the difficulty I would say for this weekend for myself, rookie going into this track in a sprint format, very bumpy circuit and quite unique one, rated quite difficult one by the drivers plus that I only put the upgrade on the car in sprint qualifying, it was really an uphill climb before the weekend and I knew it was going to be a huge challenge and to be standing here P8, I am really proud of myself of the team that have achieved. It’s just silly, because, you know, 10 seconds for that.
“I don’t want to say things that I shouldn’t, I felt I was hard done by this morning, anyway P8 was pretty good. About the incident, from our view at the time, we didn’t have a long time to really think about it, because the safety car came out directly. But from where I’m sitting, it’s really marginal. Like I said, I think back about that 10-page document [driving guidelines] in those two-tenths of a second that he sent it on my inside and couldn’t quite figure out exactly where he was relative to my mirror or whatever. So, I leave it to the team to decide that. But I think by the time they were ready to make a decision, the safety car was already out.
“Eighth or ninth or 20th, I don’t really care. It’s a shame. I was eighth, so I was going to give everything to go for that. We got very lucky to be in P8, but I was holding on for dear life with a set-up that was probably not the best for high fuel or sustained running. And I was pushed off. But anyway, tomorrow I’ll try not to be fighting with anyone. The start was a bit of a good one, a bit like dog leg there in Turn 1 and that’s something we need to be aware of in the race.”
Alonso: “Yeah, I felt solid performance in the car the whole weekend, every lap we put there seems competitive and we have been sixth or seventh since FP1, so yeah, different driving styles for both of us and it was better timing for me in qualifying. But lets see in the race, obviously I missed the sprint, I don’ know exactly what is the race pace. In all our metrics we are eighth, so sixth or seventh is good. I felt like little bit worse today compared to yesterday, there’s a little bit wind today, different direction. It is going to change direction again in the race, so it is a little bit of a guess, so we will find out. I don’t know I am not concerned, for me the tyre deg will be the concern, the temperature, the full tank for the first lap because so far we have always been with no full tank in the car.
“That will be an unknown that is the biggest concern. For the incident, I don’t think so, too many cars for a narrow corner, I was P2 at the exit of the corner, that was even more annoying because I thought I was P5 but yeah when I saw Piastri, Lando and Nico collide in the replay, obviously I was just behind Verstappen and then Nico spun completely, because of that 360 degree, it was that I had to catch my rear tyre, without that spin, I was safe, so it was incredibly an unlucky situation but I expect in the race for three or four cars to go off and recover all of them.”
Hulkenberg: “Yeah, no, I didn’t [have anywhere to go]. We were all obviously racing. Fernando was kind of taking the inside, but I knew he was diving in, but I didn’t know where he was exactly. He was in a blind spot at that moment, so I wanted to leave some space for him. And then Oscar turned in very suddenly and aggressively. I wanted to cut back for the exit, but obviously, I was there. Yeah, unfortunate for all of us. Good [Zak doesn’t blame me]. So we’re all in agreement then. Still frustrating and disappointing, because the car was strong and if we had kept it there, we would have scored points.
“I’m pretty confident and sure about that, but yeah, would have, could have, should have. It was very nice [to get P4], unexpected somewhat as well. Yeah, I don’t know, just seem to fit here. In qualifying, the final lap wasn’t clean, I was starting to struggle more with the rear axle and lost out in the final sector, my fastest time was set with the used tyre, so obviously it is not ideal and not normal.”
Lawson: “Yeah [Q3 was possible], felt very good about the car, overall it was very-very strong. It’s a shame we got a really big gust of wind at Turn 1 and it’s really upset the car. It’s just come at a really bad time. So it’s frustrating I think. If this was the best we had, OK I would have been obviously reasonably happy, but to have a very quick car this weekend and not extract it is frustrating. We will try something in the race. The car was pretty good in the sprint, hopefully we will probably find a bit of lap time, yeah we can try and move forward in the race.
“Obviously, we are not far away, but we have to overtake and this season, overtaking has been really-really tough, all of our good results have come from very strong qualifying, it is obviously what we would have hoped for today, but we will try and make some place tomorrow. Honestly I have absolutely no idea what he has to complain about. I don’t really remember being in front of him in qualifying today. He’s obviously angry, he can be angry, but it doesn’t bother me.”
Gasly: “Sprint weekends are always a busy schedule and it has certainly been a busy day at the wheel. I would say we had a decent Sprint Race to finish in P10. Turn 1 was carnage on the opening lap and I just had to try and survive and put the car in the right position to avoid any of the mess. In the end, we gained some places and just had to try our best to defend from there. We lacked pace but certainly learned a few things and tricks, which should benefit us in the race. In Qualifying, again, I felt like we did a pretty good job. I was not too happy with the final push lap where we seemed to struggle in the final corner in particular so we will review that as the first two sectors were good and competitive. I don’t think Q3 would have been possible, maybe one or two places higher, but I think, as a team, we can take the positives of being in Q2 for the second time this weekend.
“This guy [Tsunoda] was not happy. We know between drivers how to let pass other cars and know that in Sector 1 you don’t do it in the middle of Sector 1 and he wasn’t happy the way I let him pass which I don’t understand and it doesn’t make sense. I feel like I have tried my best when he clearly didn’t, yeah that cost me a bit. Looking at the gap, we are fighting for P13, it is only a position but there was probably another tenth and a half in that last corner, could be two tenths. Tomorrow, we will see what we can do from P14 and just try to capitalise on any potential chaos in front.”
Albon: “We figured there was a bit of an issue with the car in sprint quali and the sprint race, and we fixed it. I think we fixed it. It’s hard to know. We need to have a look at the data, but the balance was unbelievably different once we fixed the problem. In a good way, but also in a way that just took me by complete surprise. So, I ended up having one lap to kind of tune the tools around the car. We kind of got into a better place, I had a bit of dirty air but obviously, it is all on me, just by resolving the issue we created different balance, generally a better car but needed a bit of tuning to accommodate kind of different setup, the fixing the issue. It is fine margins and an annoying mistake, so I think it was okay…I was little bit lost out there still but it was okay to get through to Q2 at least.”
Hadjar: “Yeah, honestly I think I just got it wrong the way I approached this section. I took it too easy the first half, I arrived with too much speed the second half and just honestly the way it snapped, I was already in the wall. So, nothing I could have done. Throughout the lap I was definitely struggling with the ride, but when I lost it, it was a me issue, rather than anything else. In the sprint, I got rear-ended by Yuki and that’s…and then I was just last, pace was good but it is just not my day today. To be honest, I have had many lows in my career, and now I am just a bit more used to it, more incidents as you said, it still hits very hard.”
Here’s crash for Isack Hadjar: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-united-states-gp-qualifying-hadjar-furious-with-himself-after-crashing-out-of-q1.1846356372241269995
Here’s sprint crash: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-united-states-gp-sprint-norris-and-piastri-out-on-lap-1-after-contact-at-turn-1.1846340465924972643
Here’s how F1 US GP qualifying panned out
Here’s how F1 US GP sprint panned out