Max Verstappen has sewn up the drivers championship with four races remaining in the 2022 season.
Now his team is poised to clinch the constructors’ title this weekend. But the sport was plunged into controversy one week ago by the revelation the team failed to comply with the Financial Regulations during 2021.
That is likely to prove the main talking point as Formula 1 heads to Circuit of the Americas for its second race in the USA this year.
Red Bull set to clinch title
As is often said, the drivers’ title brings prestige but it is the constructors’ championship which determines how much money the teams win. It is therefore highly prized.
Mercedes’ run of eight consecutive titles will end this year. Ferrari retains a slender mathematical chance of winning, but realistically Red Bull are on course for a coronation. Unless Ferrari out-score them by 19 points this weekend, Red Bull will clinch the title in Austin.
But it comes after the FIA cast doubt on the means by which Red Bull achieved their titles. One week ago the sport’s governing body belatedly issued the findings of its examination of the teams’ 2021 finances, and noted Red Bull was the only team to have exceeded the $145 million spending limit. It, along with Aston Martin, was also found not to have fully complied with the procedures of the financial regulations.
What that means for the titles Red Bull won last year or their successes this year remains to be seen. There are few who seriously expected the FIA would retroactively confiscate a title from a driver or a team. But a lesser punishment might be too weak to deter others breaking the same rules in the future.
Mercedes’ victory prospects dwindling
After Mercedes’ deficit to Red Bull and Ferrari was confirmed to be genuine in the early phase of the season, there remained an expectation that the eight-time consecutive constructors’ world champions would eventually catch up to their rivals and be in the fight for race wins and even the titles themselves as the season progressed. Eventually, with each weekend that went by, that proved not to pass.
But there are still four grands prix remaining of the 2022 season. With that, there are only four opportunities remaining for Mercedes to avoid their first winless season in the V6 turbo era.
Mercedes head to the United States following two rounds in Singapore and Japan where, by driver George Russell’s admission, they had “not scored the points we should have.” But two traditionally hot rounds in Austin and Mexico City could end up suiting them better, tyre warm-up having been one of their greatest weaknesses across the season so far.
Lewis Hamilton is facing the likelihood this will end his streak of 15 straight seasons with at least one win if he fails to take the chequered flag first by Abu Dhabi. While Hamilton himself insists he cares not for the record, it’s also true that even a single win would be an important morale-boost for the team heading into the off-season and a chance at a fresh start for 2023.
Perez vs Leclerc for runner-up?
In the course of six months, Charles Leclerc has seen his best chance of winning the world championship rapidly fade. Last weekend, Leclerc’s prospects finally became zero when he was penalised after the Japanese Grand Prix for leaving the track and gaining and advantage at the final chicane, handing second place to Sergio Perez and the title to Verstappen.
Losing second also meant that Leclerc dropped behind the second Red Bull driver in the driver’s championship also. Heading to Austin, Perez sits just a single point ahead of Leclerc, effectively creating a four-race shootout between the pair over the final four rounds.
The battle for second place in the championship is hardly a glorious one, with neither driver likely to be all that commiserated by winning the honour of being the first driver to be beaten handily by Verstappen in the final standings. However, with Leclerc winning more races than Perez and Carlos Sainz Jnr – the only other drivers to have taken victories this season – there will be a certain degree of pride at stake for Leclerc to not also be forever behind Perez in the history books when the Ferrari driver should have enjoyed more than just a trio of wins.
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Friday features
With next year’s F1 calendar featuring three races in the United States for the first year since the 1980s, the desire to have an American driver in Formula 1 is higher than it may have ever been before. And Formula 1 and its teams are also keen to have a driver from its fastest-growing market on its grid – with only the FIA standing in the way of IndyCar driver Colton Herta being almost guaranteed a seat in 2023.
But this weekend, the US Grand Prix will at least feature a home-grown driver participating for the first time since Alexander Rossi back in 2015. Williams junior driver Logan Sargeant – currently third in the Formula 2 championship with one round remaining – will step into Nicholas Latifi’s FW44 in first practice. When he does so, the 21-year-old will become only the fourth American driver to participate in a grand prix weekend in the last 30 years, after Michael Andretti, Scott Speed and Rossi.
Sargeant is not the only driver set to make a cameo appearance on Friday. His Formula 2 rival Theo Pourchaire will get his first outing at a grand prix weekend in Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo, while last year’s IndyCar champion Alex Palou will get to run in Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren. With no rain expected on the long forecasts ahead of this weekend, this will be the best opportunity that Sargeant, Palou and Pourchaire will have ever had to prove themselves right in front of the eyes of the F1 pit wall.
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Bumps ahead
The Circuit of the Americas was built on unused land that included a large level of clay in the soil. Since the circuit opened 10 years ago, the track has received many complaints from competitors spanning many forms of motorsport for being excessively bumpy, with the racing surface becoming uneven in crucial areas, including some of its highest-speed corners.
In 2015, Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa both retired their Williams cars due to suspension failures which the team later blamed on the excessive bumps on the circuit. The circuit was forced to take action when MotoGP riders’ complaints over the track reached a tipping point back in 2021, with eventual champion Fabio Quartararo likening COTA to a motocross track, with riders threatening not to race at the venue in 2022 if their concerns were not addressed.
In the off-season, the circuit took action and carried out extensive resurfacing work on the track. The fast, downhill right-hander of turn two and the left hand kink over the crest at turn 10 at the far end of the circuit had concrete pads installed to reinforce the asphalt above them. The stadium section from the left-hand corner of turn 12 at the end of the back straight through to the multi-apex sequence of turns 16, 17 and 18 was also being completely repaved.
F1 teams are not expecting silky-smooth surfaces awaiting them this weekend, but hopefully the bumps will prove to be less of a problem for this year’s event than last year.
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A record crowd?
Formula 1 has never been as popular in the United States of America than it is right now. Not just among Hollywood celebrities and superstar athletes across the North American sports world, but with American motorsport fans and casual followers too. The impact of Drive to Survive continues to be felt, with the sport generating more new fans in the richest country in the world over the last five years than at any other stretch in the over seven decades the world championship has been contested.
Nowhere was that more viscerally demonstrated than in at CotA last year, where the American fans flocked to the circuit in their hundreds of thousands. After a year without a race in North America due to the pandemic, the US fans were more than ready to enjoy a race on home soil once more and produced over 400,000 spectators over the course of the weekend – with Formula 1 claiming it to be the biggest crowd ever for a three-day grand prix weekend, ahead of the four-day long Australian Grand Prix.
This year, that number is expect to rise even higher. A whole new grandstand has been built for the event on the inside of the track overlooking the Esses in the opening sector, while Formula 1’s popularity and profile has only grown in the last 12 months with the dramatic conclusion to the 2021 season, the newest series of Drive to Survive and the debut of the Miami Grand Prix in May.
The drivers championship battle may be over, but that is unlikely to put a dampener of what will almost certainly be the biggest event at the Austin circuit so far.
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