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Max Verstappen won the US Grand Prix with a dominant run for Red Bull at the Circuit of the Americas, and with victory he has staked his claim as a genuine contender in an increasingly tight Formula One world championship battle – his title rival Lando Norris beaten into second and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc into third.
With Norris’s McLaren teammate, and the championship leader, Oscar Piastri managing only fifth place from sixth on the grid, the F1 meeting in Austin has set up an enormously tense run-in as the season enters its final five meetings, with Norris closing to within just 14 points of his teammate.
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton was in fourth and George Russell sixth for Mercedes.
For Verstappen the win has put him emphatically back in the title fight. He now trails Piastri by 40 points and Norris by 26. His hopes for a fifth title remain a long shot, he needs to keep winning and for McLaren to fumble, but on this form and with the car looking increasingly impressive he will revel in bringing the pressure to bear the and has far more experience than Norris and Piastri in closing out at the sharp end of a championship.
Once Verstappen had held his lead from the start he was indomitable out front. He was without doubt aided in that any potential challenge from Norris was stymied when the McLaren driver lost second place to Leclerc through turn one. The Monegasque made a blistering opening on the quicker soft tyres, a gamble from Ferrari that paid off at Norris’s expense.
After which Norris duelled with Leclerc all race, until with a spirited effort at the death Norris claimed back second for good, but all the while Verstappen made hay and was gone. Piastri however, never really on the pace all weekend in Austin, could make no charge forward as his championship lead became slender indeed. With the leaders all one-stopping, strategies were largely matched and Verstappen, with clean air out front, needed no second invitation to grind out the kind of relentless victory that marked his previous titles.
The turnaround for Verstappen has been little short of extraordinary. Piastri had 104 points over him after the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, with the main consideration at the time being when and which McLaren driver might secure the championship.
Since then, in the space of four grands prix and one sprint, more than half that advantage has been erased and Verstappen has taken three GP wins from four. Five races and two sprints are still to come and it is worth observing that since the Dutch GP neither McLaren driver has finished in front of the world champion.
The timing has played its part. McLaren ceased development of their car some time ago, shifting resources to the 2026 model but Red Bull continued to address the failings of their car that had stymied them all season. Since the new team principal, Laurent Mekies, took over from Christian Horner in July that they have been successful in doing so has been increasingly evident.
In recent meetings on a variety of circuits and conditions the team appear to have solved the narrow operating window that was hampering performance, an achievement Verstappen has admitted “nobody expected”. He has cited a “different philosophy”, a new working approach that suggests the RB21 was never quite the undriveable beast the first half of the season indicated but rather that its consistent performance had to be teased out.
Every indication after this sweeping victory in the US is that they have done so and Verstappen is wielding it with joyful precision.
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Notably, the McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella, who has repeatedly refused to write off Verstappen this season, made his position clear on Saturday after the world champion had cantered to victory in the sprint race and claimed pole. “We need to be ready as a team and as drivers for Max and Red Bull being competitive and possibly the fastest car at every one of the remaining races,” he said.
That assessment looks all the more indisputable after this win and a sobering consideration indeed for the team that had until recently exerted an iron grip on the title race. Yet this weekend at no point did either of the McLaren drivers look like they had the edge on Verstappen.
The sprint crash was costly with Norris and Piastri taken out but in qualifying Norris was three-tenths off Verstappen’s pole time and in race pace, even on a track with high tyre degradation which had been McLaren’s ace in the hole for so long, the Red Bull was still on top.
Stella was insistent this weekend the team had no intention of prioritising either driver yet to see off a threat from Verstappen but, after the US GP, that consideration has surely become all the more pressing, amplified by the inexorable assuredness Verstappen demonstrated in Austin.
