Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton has won the United States Grand Prix to end a run of 12 weeks without a win in Formula One, having previously stood on the top of the podium in Germany in the final weekend of July.
The British driver led every lap from pole position and took the chequered flag 4.5 seconds clear of teammate Nico Rosberg to equal Michael Schumacher’s record of five wins in the country.
His victory also marks the second time in his career that he has won a race on three consecutive occasions, as he has done in Silverstone in the last three years.
The win cuts Rosberg’s Drivers’ Championship lead to just 26 points with three races to go in the 2016 season. The German now sits top of the standings on 331 points, with Hamilton on 305.
This total of points is the most the German driver has ever amassed in one championship season, beating his previous best of 322 points from last year’s campaign.
The Circuit of the Americas remains just one of four tracks on the current calendar on which Rosberg is yet to win in Formula One alongside the Canadian, Hungarian and Malaysian Grands Prix.
At the start of the race, Hamilton got away well in the lead from pole with Rosberg slotting in behind his gearbox in a dramatic opening lap throughout the field.
The Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, who started on supersoft tyres instead of the softs the Mercedes were using, had a good start to be side-by-side with Rosberg and then pass him after turn two. Kimi Raikkonen also benefited at the start to get up to fourth and past Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Valtteri Bottas and Nico Hulkenberg collided with each other at the first turn with the Williams driver trying to avoid the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel. Hulkenberg’s front left corner of his car hit the right rear of Bottas, causing a puncture to the Finnish driver’s tyre. Damage to Hulkenberg’s car forced him to retire from the race.
Meanwhile, Hulkenberg’s teammate Sergio Perez and Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat made good starts to move into the final two spots in the top ten before these two drivers were also involved in an incident which caused the Mexican driver to spin.
The Russian driver was given a ten-second time penalty for causing this collision. McLaren’s Fernando Alonso and Haas’ Esteban Gutierrez capitalised to take these spots away from Perez and Kvyat. After these spectacular opening moments, the race then settled down as focus quickly turned to what strategies could be used.
After the first pit stops, Hamilton kept the lead after pitting on lap 12, while Ricciardo remained ahead of Rosberg after pitting two laps earlier than German on lap nine to dispose of his supersofts. Rosberg was the only one of the top five to use a different strategy for this stop, moving onto mediums instead of softs.
The order after the first stops presented an interesting scenario, with the top five, Hamilton, Ricciardo, Rosberg, Verstappen and Raikkonen, just separated by ten seconds with just under a third of the race gone. However, by lap 25, Hamilton had already extended his lead to over 8.3s ahead of Ricciardo.
Drama struck just two laps later as Verstappen followed Ricciardo and Raikkonen in making a second visit to the pit lane, just one and two laps later than his rivals.
However, he had misinterpreted the situation, coming into his pit box when his team were not prepared to replace his tyres. “I thought you boxed me, sorry,” Verstappen clarified over team radio.
On lap 31, the Dutch driver retired from the race after his car suddenly became slow, going through a gravel trap and parking his car in front of a gap in a barrier.
“Engine failure I think or something,” he explained to his team while driving around. “Something’s hitting the engine, the faster I drive, the harder it hits.”
Despite parking off track, this brought out the Virtual Safety Car on that lap, with drivers including Hamilton and Rosberg being given the chance to pit under the system to finish the race on medium tyres. This gave Ricciardo a huge disadvantage going into the final 25 laps as both Mercedes were given a free pit stop and he was now stuck in third.
Raikkonen, who had gone onto softs in his last stop and was using a three-stop strategy, pitted for his final stop on lap 39, but was forced to stop at the pit lane exit after seemingly having a loose right rear wheel. “There was a gun still attached,” his race engineer Dave Greenwood informed him over team radio.
The race again relaxed itself for the final 16 laps as Hamilton came over the line on lap 56 to take his win, with Rosberg and Ricciardo completing the podium.
Vettel finished fourth for the second race in succession ahead of Alonso, who made up positions in the final laps of the race. The Spaniard got past Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz on the final lap after previous disposing of Williams’ Felipe Massa.
Alonso and Massa made slight contact as the Spaniard forced his way past his former Ferrari teammate. Massa was forced to pit on the penultimate lap after suffering a front left puncture.
Perez and Button took eighth and ninth, while Haas’ Romain Grosjean claimed the final point in the team’s first home race.
Renault’s Kevin Magnussen finished as the first driver outside of the points in 11th with Kvyat and his Renault teammate Jolyon Palmer behind him.
Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr finished in 14th and 15th ahead of Bottas, who could only recover to 16th. Manor’s Pascal Wehrlein and Esteban Ocon were the final two drivers to complete the race.
The race ended with four drivers failing to finish. Hulkenberg’s retirement was the fourth of his season and his second first lap incident in the last four races.
Gutierrez followed Hulkenberg in retiring from the race on lap 18 after appearing to suffer braking issues. He went off track in the second sector of the track on lap 17 and suffered a massive lock-up down the right-hand side of his car.
Verstappen, the third retirement, ended a race early for the third time in 2016 and the first time in 11 races since not finishing in Monaco.
Raikkonen was the final retirement of the race. Coincidentally, it was also the third time in 2016 that he has finished a race prematurely and his first race-ending incident in 11 races since the Monaco Grand Prix.
