Why Mercedes could have won the F1 US GP from which Hamilton was disqualified

After a lifeless first sprint race at Austin, the 2023 United States Grand Prix gave the weekend a cracking ending even though the result of both was the same: a Max Verstappen victory.

His GP triumph at the Circuit of The Americas was his 50th in Formula 1. But had things worked out only slightly differently, Verstappen’s quest to take his latest milestone could well have extended to the upcoming Mexican GP. Indeed, it could well have been Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton standing atop an F1 podium for the first time since the Saudi Arabian GP in December 2021.

Things went wrong for Hamilton right at the beginning, when front row starters Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris had very different getaways. Norris was quickly alongside the Ferrari and at Turn 1 was already ahead and swinging clear through the apex, before shooting clear in the lead.

Behind, Hamilton went from unsuccessfully fending off Carlos Sainz’s run behind Norris to the uphill hairpin’s inside, to going wide and edging Verstappen to the track limit on the exit.

At the end of lap one of 56, Norris led Leclerc by 1.8 seconds, with Sainz 0.8s further back and Hamilton and Verstappen trailing – the world champion having powered past George Russell off the line.

Norris felt “my start was very good” and that “to get into the lead – that was a podium maker”. He added: “I think without that it would have made my race a lot tougher.”

That was because now the McLaren driver’s task was clear: to push on as quickly as possible, come what may with Verstappen recovering up the order after his Friday qualifying track limits slip and subsequent sixth place starting spot.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Norris got the jump on polesitter Leclerc to spark his early hopes of victory

“We thought firstly that we wanted to go for the victory,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella would later explain. “The only way to do that was to try to go as fast as possible and let’s see what the tyres do and if the tyres are consistent or not. There was no point in just taking care of tyres and then just being slow from a lap time point of view to achieve a certain strategy.”

What this added up to was Norris pulling 3.2s on Leclerc in the five laps it was the Ferrari driver chasing him in second. In that time, Hamilton had taken until lap four to repass Sainz with an uncontested DRS charge to Turn 12, with Verstappen doing likewise to the Spaniard from much further back at the same spot one tour later. On lap six, Hamilton took the DRS-powered outside line around Leclerc at Turn 12 and then faced the same 3.2s gap to Norris.

This initially held north of 3s before coming steadily down to 1.8s by the 17th tour, during which time Verstappen had taken rather longer to pass Leclerc, which he did eventually with a late inside Turn 12 dive that the Ferrari driver fought late. That defence had Leclerc off in the Turn 12 run-off and he continued the fight until Turn 15 commenced before backing out. Race control looked at the incident but deemed it unworthy of a proper investigation.

What was a surprise was Mercedes not immediately calling Hamilton in too to cover Verstappen. The Black Arrows squad instead had something else in mind: a one-stopper

“I tried to be patient [in] the first stint,” Verstappen explained. “But, at the same time, following for so long did hurt my tyres a little bit.”

This explains why in the four laps after he’d reached the podium places, the Dutchman had first lost 0.4s to Norris’s overall lead before shrinking it back to 6.6s and the immediate gap he faced to Hamilton had grown by 0.5s to 4.6s.

Then, on lap 16, Red Bull made the first call of its aggressive tyre strategy, bringing Verstappen in to take a second set of new mediums. This cemented his plan to complete a two-stopper.

“All our simulations were telling us that the two-stop was a faster race,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Going for an aggressive two-stop strategy allowed Verstappen to go on the attack

McLaren’s minimal management approach clearly set it on a two-stopper too and so it was no surprise to see the early leader head to the pits the lap after Verstappen’s first stop – the undercut’s power here clear and potentially worth 2s.

It was also no surprise to see McLaren replace Norris’s starting mediums with the hard tyres at the first opportunity – given it had committed to banking these in practice after being unsure back then “whether the medium compound grained or doesn’t grain [in the hot conditions last weekend]”, per Stella.

“It is not an easy science to master so we wanted to opt for what was a safer choice knowing that our car normally works well on the harder compound,” he added.

But what was something of a surprise was that Mercedes didn’t immediately bring Hamilton in too to cover Verstappen. The Black Arrows squad instead had something else in mind: a one-stopper.

“When Max pitted, we knew that we only needed to make three more laps to make a one stop stick,” explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.

Hamilton was finally brought in on lap 20, but Horner and Red Bull saw this as Mercedes’ “indecision”, while Mercedes told its charge he’d banked a tyre offset. When Hamilton rejoined, he faced a 6.5s gap to Verstappen – a swing he couldn’t believe at the time in the race or afterwards.

“When Max came into the pits, he wasn't even close to me,” he said in the post-race press conference. “It must have been 10 seconds on me.”

In the next phase of the race – when Hamilton had that total to Norris in the lead – the focus switched to Verstappen’s quest to recover to first. In the nine laps after Norris’s opening stop, Verstappen erased his lead with a 0.35s average advantage – his gains in part coming from the pair now running different compounds.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Verstappen made the most of his tyre advantage to reel in Norris in the second stint

Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola reckoned the mediums Verstappen had stayed on ended up being “more manageable” and had more grip. This he put down to “the track evolution factor”, which was boosted by last weekend being completely dry and the Austin track having the type of rough asphalt where cars “put down more rubber”.

And so, having roared up behind his friend (the pair spent the final minutes before the post-race press conference going over Norris’s sticker-logo-covered race boots, Hamilton and Verstappen having had a somewhat icy chat about their pre-Mexico travel plans beforehand) Verstappen made his move on lap 28.

It was at the same spot as his Leclerc dive, but even later – and this time Norris didn’t put up anywhere near the same level of fight. He came back alongside on the exit but abandoned the scrap just one corner later. Stella felt the decision to have Norris press on in the first stint had “worked very well” and even at one stage thought “it looked like we could have enough pace to finally grasp the victory”.

“He [Norris] came across at quite an angle and so then I had dodge to the right side and then cut back. It was pretty cool. I enjoyed it” Lewis Hamilton

But once Verstappen and the medium tyre advantage erased that tantalising picture, Stella explained that Norris had “lost a little bit the tyre [operating window] so we pitted onto the second set of hards”. This explains why Norris’s second stint was a comparatively short for the hards at 17 tours, and with being the first of the leaders to pit again on lap 34 he’d enjoy the undercut’s gain most.

“I was always in the vulnerable position, the one defending, and just clearly didn't have the pace at the end of any of the stints,” Norris reflected later. “Tyre degradation was just not on par with [Verstappen and Hamilton].”

The second time around, it was Red Bull that quickly moved to cover Norris’s second stop – with Verstappen enjoying a 3.1s lead that had risen after the Briton had initially been able to stick close to the RB19’s rear. When Verstappen rejoined, now finally on the hards, his advantage stood at 1.9s.

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

With Verstappen reaching the lead at half-distance, his race went from attack to defence as brake issues emerged

And so, attention turned to Hamilton, as he again stayed out longer compared to his rivals – although in pitting on the 38th tour, that capped his stint at 18 laps (two under his opening run), no additional tyre offset was built. Mercedes had learned from Hamilton’s pace drop at the end of his opening stint.

Critically now, Hamilton was back on the new mediums and with Verstappen ahead discovering “the hard tyre was not very good”, as Norris and McLaren already knew. They lacked any new mediums with which to return for the final stint.

All the leaders had to repass the one-stopping Leclerc in the closing phase. Verstappen and Norris both did this on the 39th tour – the leader with at Turn 1 and the chaser at Turn 12. Hamilton then cruised up to the Ferrari and passed by well before Turn 12 with DRS on lap 43. At the end of this, he faced a 3.7s gap to Norris and 6.2s to Verstappen. When he’d started back on the mediums those gaps had sat at 6.4s and 7.6s.

Hamilton reached Norris’s DRS range on lap 48 and was all over the McLaren through sector three. At the start of the following tour, Hamilton mounted a Turn 1 attack. Norris firmly defended with a very late move to cover the inside run to the apex.

“He came across at quite an angle,” Hamilton said of his compatriot’s driving here. “And so then I had dodge to the right side and then cut back. It was pretty cool. I enjoyed it.”

On the hairpin’s downhill exit, Hamilton outdragged Norris and then set off after Verstappen, who now enjoyed a 5.2s advantage. Hamilton cut into that at an average rate of 0.6s each time over the following six tours to the start of the final lap – a period characterised by Verstappen getting audibly more agitated with a brake problem that had been hampering him since “just lap one”.

This getting worse, perhaps plus with Verstappen’s extra stress at engineer Gianpiero Lambiase repeatedly talking to him during braking phases, meant the lead gap fell rather dramatically late on – just when it looked like Hamilton’s initial work wasn’t chipping back enough ground.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Hamilton was gaining on Verstappen but strategy left him coming up short on the final lap

On the last tour, Hamilton was 1.8s back, but Verstappen gaining DRS from Zhou Guanyu as he came up to put a lap on the Alfa Romeo driver helped ease the leader’s progress to the firework-packed finish line. His winning margin ended up being 2.2s as Hamilton somewhat backed off to the flag. Norris came home 10.7s adrift.

When asked if he might have won had he not been left out longer in stint one or even stopped earlier than Verstappen initially, Hamilton was sure. “Yes,” he replied, before adding: “I mean, I do think we would have been in a fighting position to fight with Max. We made our life a lot harder than it probably needed to be.”

So, the question becomes: does that claim stack up? Was this a win Mercedes lost on a day when Verstappen and Red Bull unexpectedly ended up under a lot of pressure?

On a pure time loss assessment, the answer has to be yes, based on Hamilton getting Verstappen’s lead to a minimum of 1.8s before the final lap and being left feeling “maybe one more lap I would have been closer into Turn 11 and maybe been in a fighting position [at the end of the back straight armed with DRS], maybe two”.

But what really cost Mercedes most was its initial decision to try and see if the one-stopper was ever really viable

That affirmative comes from several areas. The first was Hamilton ruing “our starts this weekend”. The time lost to repassing Sainz cost Hamilton 0.8s in GP race time to Verstappen.

Also at the start, Mercedes may well reflect how Russell “making a bad start” was costly in terms of the second W14 being able to act as a rolling road block on a day when “Mercedes was as quick as Red Bull”, per Stella’s assessment, and Sergio Perez’s latest poor qualifying again had him absent from the lead fight.

Hamilton also regretted “in one of the pitstops [his first], I might have been a bit long [on the pitbox marks], which then made it harder for the guys and then the stop wasn’t that great overall”. Wolff also reflected that his team “in terms of [pit] equipment and science around it, the way we are set up” can’t compete with the quickest F1 services these days.

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Slow pitstops and sluggish starts cost Mercedes in the battle for victory - until the plank wear issue made it irrelevant

Hamilton’s stops were clocked at 3.6s and 3.4s – a combined loss to Verstappen of 1.2s, with the Dutchman having a (relatively) long 3.3s stop of his own at his second service, with a slow left-rear switch. Again, that time loss was critical to Mercedes’ outside victory shot.

Then there were the Turn 11 lock-ups both former 2021 title rivals had during the race’s middle third. Hamilton’s cost him 2.7s to Verstappen while the Red Bull driver actually gained 0.4s on the tour of his slip. Norris also did this too shortly after Hamilton, with Stella later reflecting that “braking into Turn 11 and then traction out was the most problematic phase from a car performance point of view”.

But what really cost Mercedes most was its initial decision to try and see if the one-stopper was ever really viable. When Autosport asked why he was certain a different strategy would have led to a different result, Hamilton replied: “It's not necessarily that I'm certain. At the end of the day, I was 1.8s behind Lando at the beginning [before the McLaren’s first stop], and there's a huge undercut.

“So in that moment, most likely we should have probably pitted and I would come out ahead. We would have been close, but potentially [we would have] overtaken Lando in that scenario. It would have still been close between us all, because I think we were all similar in pace. I think we [also] just lost too much time in extending. I really dropped off a cliff in performance. And then when I came out [from the first stops], these guys were miles up the road.”

That bears out, as Hamilton’s pace once in the lead for the first time dropped from the mid-1m42s bracket to the high-1m42s and then into the mid-to-high-1m43s. He also felt having in any case ended up with a tyre life offset, “when their tyres are starting to drop [that was useful], but that didn't seem like it really made a big enough difference”.

Wolff explained that the one-stop experiment had come about because Mercedes “believed if we were on the same strategy – cover Max, be a few seconds ahead of him – that would not be enough to win the race”.

Had Mercedes been able to get Hamilton closer to Verstappen, its victory chances were enhanced because the brake issue – which stemmed from Red Bull changing Verstappen’s brake material in parc ferme, allowed by the rules and not uncommon, although it wasn’t listed in the official FIA bulletin concerning such matters – left the world champion “not getting the same feeling from the brake pedal that he had previously”, according to Horner.

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Verstappen's brake problem was also hurting his tyre management but he held on to take a 50th career win

That had a knock-on impact into how Verstappen went about his tyre management – Horner said it “interfered”. Plus, inconsistent braking on a bumpy surface only raised tyre temperatures even further. So, another Verstappen/Hamilton battle most likely went begging…

But everything would have been rendered academic anyway, because almost two hours after the chequered flag, the FIA announced the rear plank areas on Hamilton and Leclerc’s cars were “not in compliance with Article 3.5.9” – that stipulates only 1mm can be worn away from “the peripheries of the designated holes” in the plank.

“Without running at a race fuel load in FP1 combined with a circuit as bumpy as this have contributed to the higher than expected wear levels” Andrew Shovlin

It had been measured they had worn more than this and so the pair were duly thrown out of the results. This promoted Norris to second and Sainz to third.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, said the issue on Hamilton’s car came down to “without running at a race fuel load in FP1 [due to the compressed sprint weekend format], combined with a circuit as bumpy as this and the parts of the track where the drivers have to put the car during the GP, have contributed to the higher than expected wear levels”.

A deflating end to a gripping contest. One that comes with yet another new piece of history for Verstappen.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Verstappen joins Hamilton, Schumacher, Vettel and Prost in the 50 or more F1 wins club