Verstappen crushes Austin as Norris outmanoeuvres Leclerc for second; Piastri labours to fifth
Max Verstappen didn’t just win the United States Grand Prix; he put it in a headlock and strolled away. Pole, launch, lead every lap — the kind of afternoon that leaves everyone else squinting at timing screens and shrugging. By the flag, the Red Bull driver had tightened the title fight, trimming the deficit to 40 points with a clinical seventh win on American soil.
The start was classic Verstappen. Lights out, he snapped left to snuff out Lando Norris, only for that move to hand Charles Leclerc a lane up the inside into Turn 1. The Ferrari slotted into second, while George Russell’s sluggish getaway dropped him behind Oscar Piastri. From there, the race split: Verstappen running his own program, the rest of the lead pack stuck in a nasty little argument.
Behind them, Alex Albon had a spin after a brush with Gabriel Bortoleto, which scattered the Williams to the back, but the opening lap stayed mostly tidy. Piastri immediately felt heat from Russell, fending off a look at the Turn 11 hairpin before McLaren began managing his pace — a theme of the afternoon for the Australian.
Leclerc, on used softs, defended doggedly as Norris cleared his own front wing of bugs and set about the Ferrari. The first rush came on Lap 4 with DRS — Norris nosed ahead down the back straight, Leclerc slammed the door at Turn 15, and the cat-and-mouse drew Lewis Hamilton into the picture in the sister Ferrari on mediums. It was punchy, committed racing. It was also costing them time: Verstappen was already gone.
A Virtual Safety Car on Lap 7 briefly scrambled the deck when Kimi Antonelli pirouetted at Turn 12 after contact with Carlos Sainz. The Williams had a lunge that wasn’t far enough alongside to stick by the book; Sainz later peeled to a stop just shy of the final corner. The VSC ended at the start of Lap 9, and if anything, it helped Verstappen more than anyone else.
The middle stint turned into a two-stop masquerading as a one, everyone nursing rubber while eyeing a soft-tyre dash to the line. Norris kept jabbing at Leclerc — around the outside, then the inside, then outside again — and picked up a black-and-white flag for track limits after a third strike. The pressure finally told on Lap 21: better drive out of Turn 11, DRS open, job done before the braking zone. Somewhere in the distance, Verstappen was 11 seconds up the road.
Ferrari pulled Leclerc soon after for mediums, clearing Hamilton to chase Norris and asking McLaren to blink. McLaren covered off Mercedes and Ferrari across the window — Piastri first on Lap 30 for used softs, Hamilton on 31, Norris on 32 — before Verstappen cashed in his margin on Lap 33. Russell followed suit and the field reset.
The order: Verstappen, Leclerc (offset on mediums), Norris, Hamilton, Piastri, Russell, Yuki Tsunoda, Oliver Bearman, Nico HĂĽlkenberg and Fernando Alonso in tenth. Bearman, feisty as you like, sent a low-percentage move at Tsunoda into Turn 15, launched across the grass and looped it. He kept it pointing, briefly, but HĂĽlkenberg nicked eighth as the Haas gathered itself.
Up front, the fight for second reignited. Norris radioed that his softs were “gone” and had to conductor his pace — close up to Leclerc, cool the rears, try again — while the Ferrari’s mediums refused to wilt. It bubbled and bubbled until Lap 51: Leclerc slid out of the final corner, Norris lunged into Turn 1, Leclerc tried the cutback and kept him honest for half a lap, but the McLaren got the traction out of the Turn 11 hairpin, DRS did the rest, and second place was sealed.
From there, Verstappen simply brought it home. No fuss, no alarms, a metronomic kind of domination that’s become his trademark. Norris was a comfortable runner-up and, in truth, probably the only driver who even glimpsed the leader’s pace. Leclerc banked third after a muscular, tactically sharp drive on the wrong tyre at the start. Hamilton nursed what Ferrari suspected was a slow puncture to fourth, fading late but still clear of Piastri, who never quite unlocked the rhythm his teammate found.
Russell salvaged sixth after the start boxed him in. Tsunoda kept it clean and quick for seventh in the second Red Bull. HĂĽlkenberg scored for Sauber with eighth, Bearman reset and grabbed ninth after that grassy detour, and Alonso nicked the final point for Aston Martin.
Elsewhere, Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar brought both Racing Bulls home just outside the points, Lance Stroll followed Alonso in the second Aston, and Antonelli recovered to 13th after the early spin on a day when Mercedes didn’t have the weapons to influence the podium. Albon’s opening-lap drama left him in 14th, Esteban Ocon’s Haas took 15th, and the Alpines of Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly trailed home a lap down with Bortoleto’s Sauber. Sainz’s Williams, hamstrung by that Lap 7 clash, retired.
So the takeaway’s simple. Verstappen still holds the whip hand on Sundays, even with the field’s gains through 2025. McLaren had one hand on Ferrari all afternoon, but tyre offsets and track limits turned it into a tense chess match rather than a brawl. And as the points gap shrinks to 40, the margin for error in this championship just got smaller — for everyone chasing, but especially for the driver who keeps making days like this look easy.
