It’s evident that the Ferrari still couldn’t keep up with the Red Bull or Mercedes, his tires unwilling to put up with the demanding pace.
Hamilton, however, was pumping out the lap times to take the fight to Verstappen. During his second stint, he closed the pace gap to the Red Bull, shown by the solid turquoise line dipping closer to the dotted blue line of Verstappen until, on lap 31, it drops below. Here Hamilton is besting the Dutchman, but not for long.
Seeing Verstappen’s pace beginning to deteriorate, Mercedes pitted Hamilton, looking to gain the advantage with an undercut.
Hamilton goes hard
Chapter 4 Tire strategy summarized
All of the frontrunners pursued the same initial strategy in the race, starting on medium tires and switching to hards, satisfying the two-compound requirement for the race. This was in line with Pirelli’s recommended strategies, shown at the top of Chart 4.
Mercedes only had fresh hard tires left for its second stop; its rivals opted for mediums. This wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage. As seen further up the page in Chart 3, the Silver Arrows had tended to fare better for pace on the hard compound compared to the medium. The extra durability was also a positive, although the race would go on to show that the degradation of the medium tire was not nearly as bad as had been anticipated.
Hamilton pitted at the end of lap 34, followed a lap later by Verstappen and Leclerc, ready to resume their challenge for the win. But a troublesome Red Bull wheel gun had other ideas.
Wheelgun foils Verstappen
Chapter 5 Pit stop gain/loss
The wheelgun glitch left Leclerc stationary for around 8.5sec longer than Leclerc. The delay was enough for Leclerc to get the jump on Verstappen and come out ahead.
The Ferrari driver was back in the fight and it brought benefits for Hamilton too, who was now ahead of both other contenders for the race win, in clear air and with a rear-gunner — in the shape of Leclerc — to delay the faster Verstappen .
That situation lasted until lap 39 when Verstappen was finally able to pass Leclerc, and set his sights on the Mercedes.
Ferrari failing appears again
chart 6 Tire degradation
The pace battle raged on between Hamilton and Verstappen. Chart 4 shows the third-stint lap times of the front runners, corrected to exclude the effect of the reducing fuel load.
Verstappen had the early advantage against Hamilton – not unexpected given his softer tire compound. It took a while for Verstappen’s pace to be challenged by Hamilton on the hard compound. In fact, there is only one occurrence where Hamilton had better pace, and only a couple of other moments where he was on par with the Red Bull.
This pace advantage by way of a softer compound and slow degradation helped Verstappen close the gap to Hamilton and make a straightforward overtake for the lead on lap 50.
Verstappen passes Hamilton for the lead of the US GP
Xavi Bonilla / DPPI
From this point, it wasn’t long before Hamilton’s tires really started to let go — the chart above showing how his lap times rise sharply.
That said, his times were still competitive against Leclerc, on the faster medium tyre, The Ferrari suffered from degradation about nine laps into his final stint: the red line spiking up at that point and remaining well above the previous lap times.
There was a further drop off in pace towards the end of the stint, confirming again the Ferrari’s tendency to be harder on its tyres. As a result, Hamilton was unthreatened in second.
Leclerc, on the other hand, was not out of danger as Perez was still hammering out decent pace. Scroll back to Chart 1 and we can see how much Perez was able to get into Leclerc. But there weren’t enough laps to mount a challenge for the final podium place. Leclerc too was safe.
And so, Verstappen survived against setbacks to take another victory at the United States Grand Prix. Hamilton missed out on a chance to score a first win of the 2022 season but demonstrated much-improved performance.
Leclerc showed that he can make his way through the field but the woes of tire wear remain a top concern for Ferrari to overcome. The convergence of these narratives made for a podium of different triumphs.
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