2019 US GP Review

Valterri Bottas took pole position and won the race, putting in a great performance, but this race will be remembered as the race where Lewis Hamilton sealed his sixth Championship. Hamilton was nowhere in qualifying, ending up in fifth place, but his race was impressive. Making a good start, he passed Vettel's car in the Esses, that shouldn't be possible as Vettel struggled to switch his tyres on. But even still, he could have waited till the hairpin or the long straight, but ever the showman and racer, he decided to line his car up and overtake him around the outside. He then proceeded to make the slower one stop strategy work, even defying team orders as he knew his tyres wear (1 billion times better than AWS Insight's awful guess work graphics). When Bottas came to overtake, he made him work for it, it was for victory after all. So for me, arguably, Hamilton drove a better race, but he had already lost on Saturday's performance, whilst Bottas did incredibly well to get pole position, breaking Ferrari's streak, and did everything he needed to do to win fairly comfortably.

Verstappen had a normal race for him, after a run of not so straight forward races, being ready to pounce for victory should Bottas race come undone. He chased down Hamilton but it wasn't quite enough for us to see the wheel-to-wheel battle for second place - Hamilton managing his tyres and his pace to perfection. Albon would have been much closer in qualifying had he not exceeded track limits on his final run, but he bogged down at the start and was squeezed in turn 1 and yet again was left to fight his way back through the field. He's becoming very good at it, but it's becoming all too common a story. He could do with a normal weekend where he's on the right strategy and mixing it with the other top two teams, rather than picking his way through the midfield again.

Ferrari were nowhere on the first stint, more dramatic in Vettel's case as he was passed by Hamilton, Leclerc, Norris and Ricciardo in short succession. Leclerc ended up over 50 seconds behind Bottas at the end of the race. We thought they had understood their car and put upgrades on to make it work at all kinds of tracks, but it was the same story as earlier in the year when we expected more from them but they ended up being so far behind. Vettel's suspension failure raises some eyebrows as he hadn't really gone off, and he didn't have much contact - yes it was a bumpy track, but the suspension shouldn't fail like that and it could have been worse and spewed him into a barrier at an awkward angle.

The battle between Ricciardo and Norris (and Sainz to a degree) was brilliant, as both cars were on form at the head of the midfield, and both racing to be best of the rest. If Norris had another lap, he probably would have finished ahead of Ricciardo, but both of them had good weekends, with Sainz being caught out with Albon at the start.

For a second race in a row, Kvyat earned himself a penalty on the last lap and which has bumped him out of the points again, and the 'torpedo' nickname is quickly returning.

Sergio Perez was for me the other standout of the midfield, dragging his Racing Point into the points again, producing some great overtakes along the way after starting from the pitlane.

A quick nod to Raikkonen, last year's winner, who put in the kind of performance he was doing week in week out at the beginning of the season, but the car has clearly fallen behind the other midfield teams.

As much as Ferrari's suspension failure shouldn't have happened, (and the crack found in Verstappen's wing), but Magnussen's brakes failing is another big no-no in car failures you should never have.

We've had a great second half of the year, building up anticipation for the next year, but, we've been here before and certainly for 2019, it was an anti-climax as Mercedes won 8 races on the trot, setting records for 1-2s in a row. 2020 isn't a right off now that the 2021 rules have been confirmed, but you have to think there will be some teams who will give up on 2020 pretty quickly, particularly the less funded teams. Even the bigger teams will be looking to make the most of the resources whilst they have them.