Lewis Hamilton bagged a third consecutive win at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. He has won this race four times since this track was introduced in Formula 1 for the first time in 2012. He has now won 50 races, just behind Alain Prost (51) and Michael Schumacher (91). However, Hamilton could not gain enough points over Nico Rosberg, his Mercedes teammate and world championship leader. Hamilton’s victory has managed to cut down Rosberg’s lead to 26 points with three races left to go.
Hamilton started from the pole position and ran a perfect race. Rosberg was second in the grid, but lost his place in the second turn of the very first lap to Daniel Ricciardo.
Kimi Raikkonen also got past Max Verstappen in the first lap. Raikkonen held on to his position until lap 13, but Verstappen, the fastest man on the track, overtook him soon after the first pit stop.
As Verstappen seemed to be catching up on Rosberg, he tried to take an early pit stop so that he could have fresh tires to beat him. Unfortunately, the Red Bull pit team was not ready for him when he got there, causing him to lose valuable time. The fiasco cost him two places to the Ferraris.
However, the mistake seemed insignificant later, as Verstappen had to halt since his engine was making a grinding sound, which brought the virtual safety car period.
During a virtual safety card period, overtaking is disallowed and cars drive slower than the usual lap times. Rosberg took complete advantage of this and pitted immediately. That gave him an advantage over Ricciardo as he came out of the pits 2.5 seconds ahead.
Much to the dismay of Ricciardo, Rosberg paced later and gave him no opportunity to retain the second position. Rosberg seemed to cover time on Hamilton as well, but it was a little too late.
The Ferraris didn’t have a great day in office, as Raikkonen had to retire in the final laps due to a goof-up by the technical pit crew, handing over his place to Sebastian Vettel. In the mid-half of the lineup, former World Champion Fernando Alonso continued to amaze his fans as he completed a magnificent race. Starting from the ninth position, he fought his way to the fifth position beating the likes of Carlos Sainz and Felipe Massa.
With a victory for Lewis Hamilton, the championship is promised to go down to the wire. Inevitably, all the Formula 1 fans will be glued to calculators finding out the chances each driver has to win this year. However, the real story will unwind on Oct. 30 as a highly exciting race is anticipated in Mexico.
