Posted on 19th November 2013
Austin Texas, is one of the F1 venues I absolutely adore. The Circuit of the Americas has such theatre about it, some fantastic sweeping bends, plenty of elevation and a great atmosphere. The American people love motorsport, and thankfully they have accepted F1 into their country once again with a warm welcome. The race this year may not have been the best, but it did have some interesting developments I thought.
The 2013 Formula 1 United States Grand Prix.
The race began with Vettel leading away easily from pole position, and teammate Mark Webber having another poor start. Romain Grosjean had the best getaway in the Lotus moving up into second place. The Frenchman who is on top form at the moment made the best of his good start, and started pulling away. Vettel’s dominance was once again proven as he led for most of the race, the German made history with a magnificent eight race victories in a row. “The car was fantastic”, he told Mario Andretti on the podium. “It was a bit tight at the start; Romain had a good start initially, I didn't know whether it would be enough. It's tough judgement up the hill and then I just tried to focus on myself. We had incredible pace again in the car and could control the gaps”.
There was no contest for the lead, Sebastian Vettel had it covered easily. But the fight for second was much closer, particularly in the closing laps. Grosjean had it pretty much all his own way, but towards the end Mark Webber piled on the pressure.The gap was being demolished by the Australian, cruising up to the Lotus seemed easy. getting past however was a different story. There were a few mistakes from Webber, the Red Bull running wide and locking up. Grosjean kept his cool and was voted by many as driver of the day as he finished second for Lotus. “The car was working very well today. I'm very proud to represent Lotus and my guys that are working in Enstone. It's a fantastic team. We were copying what Mark was doing. When he was pitting for hard tyres, we pitted for hard tyres, if he was pitting for prime or option. Then in the race I was just trying to make as much gap as I could before the DRS zone, so turns eight and nine are pretty hard to follow another car”.
Mark Webber had a good result and seemed happy with the race, but rueing a mistake in qualifying which potentially cost him pole position. “Obviously pole position was very important yesterday, so I knew it was going to be important and that it would cost me a lot better result today. A little bit disappointed not to qualify better. We knew it was not going to be the easiest to get into turn one from there”. He had no complaints about Romain Grosjean, in fact quite the opposite. “He drove very well. He was very clean on the exit of eight, nine. The DRS in the end was a little bit short on the ratios but in the end that's how you get the ratios for the whole race. So, good job for the whole team and I'm happy to finish on the podium in front of the American fans for the last time, in Formula One anyway. I'll see you next year with the Porsche”.
The Safety Car was called out at the end of lap one when Adrian Sutil crashed out of the race. The Force India made contact down the long back straight pitching the car broadside and sending it to the armco barrier. Sutil was unhurt in the accident but the recovery took a few laps as the debris was cleared. It was the first time the Safety Car had been deployed in Austin. “It feels like I ran out of luck this weekend” Sutil told reporters. “Up until Saturday morning I was looking competitive and was happy with the car, but all of that promise disappeared with the problems we had in qualifying. In the race I made a good start, gained a few positions and was racing ahead of Maldonado on the back straight. For some reason he hit my left rear wheel and I immediately lost control of the car and crashed into the barrier“s.
Mercedes couldn’t really match either Red Bull or Romain Grosjean during the race, but Lewis Hamilton was happy with fourth. “That felt good out there this afternoon and I’m really happy with fourth place. It was so nice to have a race where I could fight for position and make progress. The car felt much better today than recently so the change in chassis has definitely made a difference and a big thanks to my guys in the garage for their efforts there. I had a great start today and that was crucial to my race. We had to give up third place to Mark fairly easily to make sure our tyre management and strategy worked as it was more important for the team to finish ahead of Ferrari”. Teammate Nico Rosberg didn’t have a good weekend in Austin and hoped for better. “It really started yesterday in qualifying where I struggled with getting temperature into the tyres and starting from 12th place makes your race really difficult, especially in a one stop race. I made some nice overtaking moves but we weren’t able to do much with the strategy today because of the single stop so it’s disappointing to only have finished ninth as our car was quicker than that today. Overall though, as a team we managed to increase the gap to Ferrari and that’s a good result”.
Ferrari had a rather poor show in America, the pace was never there and neither driver really showed any promise of moving up the field. Fernando Alonso actually lost position at the start of the race which was most unusual, Felipe Massa meanwhile was battling with the midfield and unable to make progress. “It's been a really difficult weekend and I was struggling right from Friday, unable to get the tyres up to temperature or to run at a good pace. At the start, I didn't make up any places and then for all the race I was stuck in traffic, on a track where overtaking is not that easy”. Fernando Alonso was equally frustrated. “We were well aware it would be very difficult to maintain position and in fact I lost it to Perez. In the first part of the race, we weren't quick and we decided to save the tyres and then attack round the pit stop. We were more competitive on the hards, we passed Perez and set off to get Hulkenberg, but even if our situation compared to Mercedes has improved, we were unable to beat them”.
There were some excellent battles throughout the race, the two Mexicans of Esteban Gutierrez and Sergio Perez were keeping each other company throughout almost the whole race. Mexico may not be too far Austin, and there was plenty of support for both drivers. Perez finished 7th in the McLaren while countryman Gutierrez came home in 13th. Esteban did well as he started from P20 after a penalty, “It was a very tough race starting from P20. We had to make up a lot of positions on track. I managed a good first lap. I made up a couple of positions and then, once the safety car was deployed, we decided to pit in order to put me on a different strategy to the other cars”.
Sauber were pleased with both of their drivers as they showed good pace throughout. Sergio Perez however was left feeling disappointed with 7th. “To be honest, I was expecting to achieve a little bit more than seventh today. On the opening lap, I managed to push past Fernando, and the car initially felt pretty strong. After that, however, between about lap 10 and lap 15, the tyre degradation started to kick in, and we struggled relative to the others around us. They seemed to be coping with the degradation a little bit better than we were. But, more importantly, I want to say a big 'thank you' to all my Mexican and American fans for the support they've shown me all weekend”.
Williams had a difficult weekend in Austin thanks to disrespectful and uncalled for comments from Pastor Maldonado. The Venezuelan made a number of, quite frankly stupid remarks about his team. But Valtteri Bottas made mincemeat of Maldonado on track. The Finn qualified in the top ten and finished eighth, scoring his first points of the season. Points were absolutely critical for Williams in constructors championship, Bottas was pleased with the result. “I’m very happy to get my first points in Formula One today. The whole weekend has been good from setting up the car in practice through to the strategy and pitstops in the race. We managed the tyres well today and I had good feedback from my engineers on them throughout. We did have a bit of pressure from Rosberg at the end but I was able to keep pushing and hold the position. I want to say a big thanks to everyone in the team and at the factory as they have all been working so hard and really deserve this result”.
There was another standout performance this weekend from Heikki Kovalainen in the Lotus. He stood in fro countryman Kimi Raikkonen after he had back surgery earlier in the week. At very short the popular Finn stepped into the Lotus and performed outstandingly well from the off. If it wasn’t for a front wing change in the race, he would have had a much better result. “My start wasn't great but then it was going okay until the first pit stop as I was racing with the pack with the car feeling quite good. After the pit stop I started to have a few problems, but it was difficult to know exactly what was going on. We had issues with downforce so we changed the front wing and after that it was much better, although still not as good as it's felt previously this weekend. There was a KERS issue too, though not enough to account for my lack of race pace. We'll have a good look at the data and hopefully be on top of things far better for the race in Brazil”.
It was an interesting race I thought with plenty of potential excitement, which sadly didn’t quite come alive. Tyres were once again a talking point in this race with many growing increasingly frustrated with the situation. Lewis Hamilton perhaps most notably, asking for feedback on the tyres from his engineer. It was the penultimate round of the 2013 F1 championship, this is the top ten finishers.
1 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull
2 Romain Grosjean Lotus
3 Mark Webber Red Bull Racing
4 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
5 Fernando Alonso Ferrari
6 Nico Hulkenberg Sauber
7 Sergio Perez McLaren
8 Valtteri Bottas Williams
9 Nico Rosberg Mercedes
10 Jenson Button McLaren
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