TREMAYNE: Hamilton and Verstappen’s US GP fight just got me excited about the new era of F1

How ironic is it that a tense United States Grand Prix that cemented the F1’s return to the kind of popularity it enjoyed in Uncle Sam’s backyard in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, possibly the momentum in one tight battle for the world championship has swung firmly in Red Bull’s direction?

We have long viewed the Circuit of the Americas as a Mercedes track and a Lewis Hamilton track, although Ferrari was successful there in 2018 with Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas also defeated the seven-time champion there.

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And given the extraordinary speed that Mercedes showed against Red Bull in Turkey, which could have been considered the Red Bull track, I’m sure that, together with Mercedes, I expected the Brackley team to dominate again last weekend will. They definitely did on Friday morning – when Valtteri drove in 1: 34.874 minutes and Lewis in 1: 34.919 laps while Max struggled for 1: 35.806 minutes.

But there was a behind-the-scenes story when those times were set as the W12s destroyed their floors and Toto Wolff later admitted that they had to raise the ride heights to avoid a “massacre” of the cars in the race. Bobby Epstein and his crew at COTA had done everything they could to smooth out the bumps that had developed since the inaugural race in 2012 and even to sand the surface in places, but their impact had just become a very important factor.

The COTA surface has been treated to level out some of the bumps prior to the US GP

It was Red Bull’s turn on Saturday morning when a crack in the rear wing was discovered by Max Verstappen and the heat guns and carbon fiber were taken out during lunch break after the FIA ​​gave them permission to reinforce the structures on both RB16B’s.

In qualifying we had the truth: Red Bull was a fraction faster than Mercedes, with Max regaining Lewis’s lead with a final run in 1: 32.910 minutes, ahead of the Briton in 1: 33.119 minutes. Since Sergio Perez woke up to life in 1: 33.134 minutes despite a belly error and Valtteri was only fourth with his sixth new ICE in 1: 33.475 minutes, it looked like we were going to experience a change in form.

READ MORE: “I really didn’t think he’d make it,” says Horner after Verstappen sealed the tense US GP win

But then Lewis got off to a better start and took the lead at Turn 1 despite Max’s tough attempt to resist. And for that first lap, Lewis was gone. But it quickly became clear that the Red Bull was faster on the middle Pirellis, on which most of the front runners qualified.

Max looked as if he was about to prepare for the jump when he suddenly drove into the pits on lap 10. Lewis missed three more, slowed as the Merc struggled on the moderate terrain, and when he was 0.9 seconds back on lap nine he was 6.7 seconds back.

That was Red Bull’s first downright aggressive strategy, and their argument was that it was worth getting an important position on the track.

US Grand Prix 2021: Hamilton overtakes Verstappen at the start of the race

They did it again when Max pitted on lap 29 for his second set of hards and now it was Mercedes who had to risk it. Lewis was 3.2 seconds behind at this point and closed easily, making it unattractive to break in right away. Instead, they aimed at Target +6 and ran six laps longer. Lewis stretched it to eight and fought for tough times on lap 37.

So he was able to drive the rest of the race on tires eight laps younger than Max’s, and as we’ve seen with others, the hard compound was much better than the medium one. But when you really started pushing it, it quickly lost its sharpness. So Lewis first cleaned his new tires and then knocked down the hammer.

READ MORE: How Red Bull implemented their aggressive strategy to win in Austin – and where was Mercedes’ FP1 pace going?

It really continued on lap 50, Red Bull and Mercedes were only 1.5 seconds apart and there were six laps left. With the fastest lap of 1: 38.485 minutes on lap 41, Lewis had flown as it gobbled up an initial 8.8 second gap, and just like Max when Lewis had the superior car, Lewis was now running off the wheels of a machine that just wasn’t quite as good as his rival.

He inevitably used a lot of his own tires, however, and by the time we got to the crucial stage it was clear that Max had carefully harvested enough of his rubber to make sure he got out of turns 11 and 20, which were before the DRS zones.

Lewis came within 0.8 seconds on lap 55 after the brief but critical intervention of backmarker Mick Schumacher when they crossed the finish line. Ironically, although the German rookie initially delayed Max, he allowed him to receive the DRS, which he had previously been denied, while Lewis narrowly missed it.

Hamilton had driven Verstappen under a second at the end of the race

Would Lewis have been the only one who would have got DRS without Mick? Would that have made all the difference? We’ll never find out, of course, but every lap was just as important as how much better the Red Bull got out of Turn 11. It was Baku again, and it could be argued that it was just as crucial to Max’s success as all the other factors.

Either way, every man drove a brilliant race. But in many ways it made me see how racing has changed. When I was a baby, Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt played the Hamilton / Verstappen roles at a British GP at Silverstone, where they switched the lead countless times every lap despite running at record speeds, and today we’re here and happy when someone joins someone else.

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I loathe the phrase, “catching is one thing, passing is another,” not because it sounds smug and trite, but because it is so annoyingly true.

Once upon a time, in the early 1980s, F1 cars could still catch up and overtake. Repass, even! Then we got stuck with flat-bottomed cars and diffusers that were deliberately designed to give subsequent drivers a face full of dirty air that robbed them of all the all-important front-end grip. Look what happened when Lewis got on Max within 1.5 seconds: stale air, stalemate …

Rindt (# 2) and Stewart (# 4) compete in 1969

That’s why I’m so excited about the prospects for Formula 1 in 2022 when the ground effect returns and hopefully we have cars that are less affected by the turbulence of the vehicle in front and we can even see real overtaking maneuvers. Imagine if we had it in Texas … Could we have seen Lewis approach earlier, then passed by with Max and then passed again to the checkered flag?

READ MORE: 10 Things You Need To Know About The Brand New 2022 F1 Car

What did Max’s victory really mean in the meantime?

Well, for starters, it doubled its point lead. And it was also a perfect demonstration of how he can stay ice cold even under the toughest pressure and still take all the consequences into account. Another proof that a once hot-headed racing driver has matured into a serious world championship contender. However, a practice incident on Friday afternoon revealed that the tiger inside still growls when bumped.

The convention is that the car behind it usually waits until it is clear that the car in front is looking for a free lap. But Lewis didn’t wait, and when he slid forward on the pit straight and Max had to wait another lap, Max was clearly dissatisfied. He stuck his middle finger out of the cockpit, and soon he was sulking in the box, unable to record a representative time.

2021 USA GP FP2: Verstappen beats up Hamilton after wheel-to-wheel spat

However, he got the last laugh on Sunday afternoon. And while this digital incident raised the question of whether such occasional outbreaks could still jeopardize his campaign if the five remaining races get tight, I suspect it’s not one of Max’s fingers that Lewis is preoccupied with right now.

After he had been denied the chance of a very likely victory in Turkey (where Valtteri had finished second and would have robbed Max of the points) because of a motor penalty, he saw what is currently 291.5 points and 284, 5 points could have been for Max actually 287.5 and 275.5 in his favor.

And now, after he was beaten by Max on a Mercedes track and Red Bull tracks started popping up in Mexico and Brazil, the strongest message he got from Texas was that his underdog job had been tough all year, and lost by just under 1.3. Last weekend made everything even more difficult.

Verstappen was frustrated in FP2 before the US GP – but he had the last laugh on Sunday