There was something fitting about Verstappen lifting Austin’s striking winner’s trophy, in the shape of a Texas Longhorn. Coming back from a seemingly impossible position, the four-time champion is certainly grabbing the 2025 season as a whole by the horns. The big question now is if he will ever let go.
Even Verstappen himself could no longer deny the obvious. Of course he is now in the championship fight. With the work done both on its hardware and on the way it is putting it to use over a race weekend, Red Bull now has the car to beat on pretty much any circuit type, and it has a driver who simply refuses to get beaten.
Red Bull’s second driver problem is costing it dearly in the constructors’ table, but it is aiding Verstappen’s comeback mission against two McLaren drivers who will continue taking points off each other.
When Andrea Stella warned Verstappen was a threat before the Baku race despite almost 100 points behind Piastri, it sounded like the McLaren chief was talking up the opposition to keep his own troops focused. He has now been proven right, though possibly not in the way he imagined.
Make no mistake, Verstappen still has a lot of work to do, having to make up an average of eight points per weekend on Piastri. But giving the Dutchman even a whiff of a fifth title can prove lethal. Cue the Jaws music.
Two weekends on from his calamitous Baku outing, Piastri again shipped over 20 points to Verstappen over one weekend.
The Australian’s share in the Turn 1 sprint race melee has been amply discussed, and while he didn’t make a major error his cutback did come with a certain level of risk, as he soon found out.
In the bigger picture, what is more worrying than that slight but costly misjudgement is Piastri’s lack of pace in Austin. He was consistently one step behind Norris and two steps behind Verstappen through pretty much every qualifying stage, reporting a lack of confidence in how his MCL39 was behaving and responding to his inputs on a real confidence testing circuit.
After touching down in Mexico City early next week, Piastri and McLaren must quickly figure out what happened, and fix it to stabilise his dwindling championship lead.
What looked like a comfortable position – since Norris’ Zandvoort exit – has now become a huge pressure cooker, and the biggest test of Piastri’s levelheadedness yet.
Does that make Norris a winner of the weekend, as he’s now just 14 points off the lead? Compared to Piastri, maybe, but at the same time Norris is only 26 points ahead of Verstappen now. That just doesn’t feel like it’s going to be enough.
Oscar Piastri put on a brave face after a frustrating weekend
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Ferrari’s Austin weekend looked headed for disaster on Friday. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton had to pull out all the stops to even make into SQ3 in sprint qualifying after a lacklustre day for the Scuderia.
But credit where credit is due, the team worked relentlessly to get back on the front foot and found enough performance to take the measure of Mercedes, with Leclerc and Hamilton finishing third and fourth.
A significant part of the plaudits has to go to Leclerc, who was wondering if he had missed a trick when he noticed he was the only frontrunner starting the race on softs.
He needn’t have worried, because his tyre advantage immediately paid off as he robbed Norris of second. But that was the “easy bit”. The hard part was staying ahead of the faster McLaren on softs that were soon past their prime.
But while overtaking was not easy at COTA, Leclerc drove an absolutely magnificent first stint to hold off Norris as long as he did, in a car that was still fat on fuel and thus more demanding on the soft tyres than those who followed the opposite strategy and took softs over halfway. Vintage Leclerc on display.
Loser: Mercedes
Mercedes wasn’t sure why it was suddenly so competitive in Singapore, which yielded a pole-to-flag win for George Russell.
Austin was a more “normal” weekend for Mercedes, if there even is such a thing anymore for the Brackley-based team and its “surprise box” of a car, as Toto Wolff called it.
Russell’s second place in the sprint seemed to set up another strong weekend, but the Briton was then pipped to third by Leclerc in qualifying and lost his biggest chance of another podium when he slipped behind Hamilton and Piastri.
An entire afternoon followed of staring at a struggling Piastri’s rear wing, while never managing to get close enough without wrecking his Pirelli tyres.
Meanwhile, team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli also suffered a frustrating afternoon after being spun round by Carlos Sainz. Antonelli did well enough to latch onto the Fernando Alonso led train battling for the final point, but he too fell victim of the dirty air.
Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images
Nico Hulkenberg brought us one of the feel-good moments of the season with his long overdue podium in Silverstone, but ever since the German veteran received quite the beating from his rookie team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto in qualifying.
After eight consecutive qualifying defeats Hulkenberg finally had a more competitive session in Singapore, and he continued that trend with a shock fourth for Austin’s sprint race, and a second consecutive 11th grid slot for the main grand prix.
Hulkenberg admitted it was a much-needed boost after finding it more difficult to wring a time out of the Sauber in qualifying before Singapore, and he capped off his Austin weekend with eighth on Sunday, his first points since that famous Silverstone weekend.
Williams leaves Texas with nine points after Carlos Sainz’s ‘not-podium’ in the sprint and Albon’s sixth place, so this sounds a bit harsh. But the team was also flattered by the Turn 1 drama that took out several cars ahead of Sainz and Albon.
Looking at the grand prix itself, Albon’s bid came undone with a track limits strike in qualifying that saw him last on the grid, which he explained was caused by a surprise balance change that induced understeer.
Albon then spun after also nearly veering into Bortoleto in the opening stages, quickly rueing the decision to start on the much slower hard tyres that almost everyone else shunned. Having dumped the hards under the early virtual safety car, Albon was set for a long afternoon to 14th.
Albon’s race was certainly a lot longer than Sainz’s, as the Spaniard made contact with Antonelli on lap five. Sainz initially voiced his displeasure with Antonelli for not letting the Williams driver stick his nose in, but judging by the sound of his voice it felt like he also realised he mainly had himself to blame. The stewards definitely did and handed Sainz a grid penalty for Mexico.
Other than his sprint result, the silver lining for Sainz is that he leaves Austin ahead of Albon in the qualifying head-to-head standings, a good recovery after a tricky start to life at Williams.
Franco Colapinto passing Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
So instead we’re picking a driver who finished 17th as a ‘winner’? Really?
Look, Alpine’s season has gone nowhere and will continue going nowhere. But while the team is desperate for the end of the season and the 2026 rules reset, Colapinto is still fighting for his life in that second car.
The Argentinian will likely finish a miserable year on zero points, but he is still hanging in there, has at least beaten team-mate Pierre Gasly a few times since Hungary, and in Austin he showed a bit of fight by passing a slower Gasly despite being told not to.
Gasly was on older tyres while Colapinto was being hounded by Bortoleto behind him, so that “hold station” order didn’t make a whole lot of sense from the outside.
Alpine clearly wasn’t impressed with Colapinto’s move into Turn 1, with director Steven Nielsen saying “any instruction by the pitwall is final and we are disappointed that this didn’t happen”. We say good on Colapinto for not backing down, even if it was in a fight that was so far from the frontlines, it was promptly interrupted for blue flags.
Hadjar has been impressive for Racing Bulls at his best, but his qualifying crash in Austin underlined that he is still a rookie after all, and that he might well benefit from another season at the Anglo-Italian team rather than being the next talent rushed to the main team as it desperately tries to fix its second seat problem.
Hadjar’s crash, which set up a frustrating race to 16th, probably comes too late to give Red Bull cold feet, as the Frenchman’s Red Bull future should become clear over the next two weeks.
Is he the real deal? Probably. Is he the finished product right now, ready for one of F1’s absolute top seats? Hmmm.
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