Ferrari’s dominant Austin GP one-two overshadowed as title rivals clash again

It’s appropriate that the talented troupe of cheerleaders who routinely perform on the grid at Circuit of the Americas before every United States Grand Prix belong to the Dallas Cowboys.

The richest, most easily recognised and popular franchise in the National Football League, the Cowboys also have of the more tortured fanbases in the league, suffering a title drought spanning a full generation.

That legacy of failure and underachievement is another aspect the Cowboys share with Ferrari – very much the Dallas of the Formula 1 world. Despite the resources, finances, drivers and political clout of the Prancing Horse, Ferrari has only a single championship season to show for itself since Lewis Hamilton has been on the grid. Perhaps why the Scuderia has courted the seven-times world champion to Maranello for 2025.

But under the stewardship of Frederic Vasseur, a team principal with vast experience of achieving a lot with little, there are signs that Ferrari is back on the path to title success. Three victories in 18 rounds may not sound remarkable by Ferrari’s high standards, but in the most competitive season for many years, Ferrari have more than held their own against Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes.

Ferrari turned up to Texas without any upgrades and without reason to consider themselves as hot favourites for Sunday’s Grand Prix. However, after their solid showing on sprint Saturday, even championship leaders Max Verstappen and Lando Norris were wary that Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr could gate-crash their expected duel for the win from the second row.

Just as in Saturday’s sprint race, the bulk of the field lined up on the grid on Sunday with medium compound tyres, meaning no one would hold an advantage over the others on the run up the hill to turn one. With Norris on pole and Verstappen alongside on the front row, the Ferrari pair knew that their best opportunity would be to play it smart into the first corner and try to pick up the pieces when the two championship leaders inevitably clashed at turn one.

Unlike so many times when Norris has started from pole position, the McLaren driver managed to get a decent launch when the lights went out. But Verstappen’s Red Bull filled his left hand wing mirror all the way up the hill.

As the track widened to the inside with the pit exit blending into the race track, Norris left more than enough room for a Red Bull. Verstappen promptly filled the gap, pulling alongside the McLaren and reaching the apex first before the pair of them ran wide at the exit, Norris out of necessity more than want. With the two out wide, Leclerc could simply take a tighter line and accelerate past them into the lead, happily accepting the gift which had been given to him.

“I knew that Max and Lando would be very aggressive towards each other,” Leclerc later explained. “I got a good start. I saw that Max was going towards the inside as well as Lando and I was like, ‘I’m just going to prepare the exit of the corner’, which was obviously a winning bet.”

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Sweeping through the esses for the first time, Leclerc led from Verstappen, Sainz and Norris, who was demoted to fourth ahead of his team mate Oscar Piastri. Heading down to turn 12 for the first time, Sainz lunged to the inside of Verstappen, reached the apex of the left-hander first, but drifted out of the white lines at the exit. Both Sainz and Verstappen, who had been forced out onto the run off, kept their feet on the throttle pedal, but Verstappen had enough momentum to reclaim the position before Sainz could take it away.

Leclerc received a roaring ovation from the more than 100,000 fans in the grandstands as he rounded the Mario Andretti corner to complete the first lap. Verstappen was well outside of the one second needed to be within DRS of the Ferrari, but that was soon rendered moot when, for the first time since the sport’s last visit to North America for the Canadian Grand Prix, the Safety Car was deployed at the start of lap three. Hamilton, who had started down in 17th, had lost control of his Mercedes into turn 19 and his miserable weekend had now reached its end in the gravel trap.

The intervention came too early for those at the front to consider pitting, it instead playing into the hands of many drivers who intended to stretch out their opening stints as long as possible to achieve a one-stop strategy. The race resumed at the start of lap six, with Leclerc leading the field back to the green. Despite being stalked by the Red Bull out of the final corner, Leclerc successfully kept out of reach of Verstappen to establish his lead once more.

Leclerc broke beyond DRS range by the end of the first green flag lap, then continued to grow his advantage steadily over the Red Bull. Verstappen was able to keep away from Sainz behind, but the championship leader was warned that he was nursing an “issue” of some kind that would have to be addressed at his pit stop, further frustrating his attempts to keep up with the race leader.

Out front, Leclerc was comfortably the fastest driver on the circuit, the only driver lapping consistently in the 1’39s. Ferrari knew they likely had more pace than Verstappen in second, if only they could find a way of getting Sainz ahead of the Red Bull.

Fortunately, help came from an unexpected source – Sergio Perez The second Red Bull driver was running in sixth place but had dropped steadily from the two McLarens that were ahead of him. As soon as Perez was over 20 seconds adrift of Sainz, Ferrari pulled the trigger, bringing the third-placed driver in to switch onto hard tyres. He had more than enough time to rejoin ahead of Perez, giving him plenty of clear track in front of him to wake up his new tyres and make up the deficit to Verstappen.

Within three laps, Sainz had already moved virtually ahead of the Red Bull. And when Verstappen eventually pitted on lap 25, it became official. All that was left for Ferrari was to bring in Leclerc, which they did on the next lap. His advantage of more than ten seconds took all the pressure off the Ferrari mechanics as they could conservatively switch him onto the hard tyres and send him back out with more than six seconds of advantage to his team mate.

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That left only the McLaren pair still out on the circuit and yet to stop. The team had asked its drivers to extend their first stints as they felt their tyre wear was stronger than their rivals. When Norris eventually made his stop at the end of lap 31, he emerged still six seconds behind Verstappen but with tyres that were six laps fresher – a small but potentially crucial advantage.

Leclerc did not need Piastri to pit to reclaim his lead after already passing the McLaren on track before Norris had stopped. With 24 laps remaining and no intention of stopping again outside of a late Safety Car, Ferrari were in the rare situation of being in complete control of a grand prix on merit.

Having lost second to Sainz, Verstappen struggled to make any gains on the Ferrari ahead of him on the hard compound. “These tyres just aren’t good,” he bemoaned. “I can’t break, I can’t attack anything.”

Verstappen’s inability to keep up with Ferrari meant he would have to concern himself more with Norris behind him. Norris began to reel in his championship rival at a rate of more than half a second a lap, but he was encouraged by race engineer Will Joseph to make sure he did not take too much out of his tyres so he could make use of his six-lap younger rubber by the time he had caught the world champion.

Norris eventually came within DRS range of his rival on the 44th lap of 56. Verstappen’s prospects of keeping the McLaren behind him over the final 13 laps of the race seemed slim. However, whether intentionally or otherwise, Verstappen was able to take advantage of Norris’s proximity to him through the first sector to give the McLaren a generous dose of dirty air through the esses, which naturally caused Norris to fall back from him by the time they reached the DRS zone along the back straight, helping Verstappen to remain ahead.

Eventually, however, Verstappen’s defences started to weaken as his tyres faded. Norris got his first opportunity to challenge the Red Bull on lap 47, but Verstappen jealously covered the inside line into turn 12 to deny him. On lap 49, it was turn one where Verstappen was left defending fresh air to the inside, before having to do the same on the following lap as the pair lapped a Sauber. The next lap, Verstappen was again forced to cover the inside into turn 12 as Norris gained on him down the DRS straight, then had the McLaren side-by-side with him through the stadium sequence of turns 13 to 15.

The battle which had been simmering for several laps finally boiled over on lap 52. Norris exited turn 11 well within half a second of Verstappen onto the back straight and had such a speed advantage over the Red Bull that he nosed ahead before they reached the braking zone. Verstappen braked as late as he could for the corner, keeping the inside and reaching the apex slightly ahead, before running wide and out of the white lines on the outside of the track with Norris outside of him powering ahead – just like Verstappen had done to Sainz on the opening lap.

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Verstappen immediately cried foul, while Norris asked his team for advice as to whether he should concede the place. McLaren erroneously informed their driver that he had been ahead at the apex and should retain his position, but Norris was encouraged to push as much as possible to try and gain a five second advantage over Verstappen, who was given the same instruction by his own team.

While the drama unfolded behind him, Leclerc could not have been enjoying a more comfortable afternoon out front. For the first time all season, Ferrari were set to win a grand prix not because of a problem befalling a faster rival, an aggressive strategy call or because of near-impossible overtaking as was the case in Monaco, but simply because they had superior pace and balance to their rivals.

Leclerc completed his 56th lap to secure his third win of the season and Ferrari’s fourth. Eight seconds later, Sainz followed him home to complete a one-two that few would have predicted heading into the weekend. Especially one where they had not brought any upgrades to the car.

“It feels really good,” Leclerc said. “As every victory feels special for its own reasons.

“Obviously from the start I felt really good with the car. It was a bit of a lonely race, but it’s a good kind of lonely. And I hope we can reproduce that in the future.”

Sainz had been punchy all weekend but was happy to settle for second place behind his team mate.

“I think everyone needs to be very happy and very proud of this weekend,” said Sainz. “We’ve recovered from a tricky middle part of the season to suddenly put ourselves in a position to dominate the race like we did today and to be clearly the fastest car on track come race day. I’m very happy to see this and I hope it repeats itself from here until the end of the year because it would be really nice to get another win before the end of the season.”

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Norris crossed the line in third, but the stewards had already handed him a five-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. McLaren did not inform their driver at first, with Norris learning for himself when he caught a glimpse of the spectator screens on the cooldown lap.

“I should’ve just gone back behind him, shouldn’t I?,” Norris lamented, betraying his obvious frustration that he had ultimately been misled by his team’s insistence that he had the right to his position.

Verstappen therefore claimed the final podium position, in a reversal of what happened to him at the same track seven years ago. Despite being unable to convert his sprint race victory from Saturday into a win on Sunday, he was still satisfied to finish on the podium and gain points back on Norris in the championship.

“I think today wasn’t the best race for us compared to yesterday, for example,” he said. “Just struggling for balance, for grip. It was just surviving to the end. And then Lando arrived. We had some really good battles, honestly. It was really a lot of fun. But yeah, overall, it was still quite a tough race for me.”

Norris at least kept fourth place with his penalty after Piastri was asked to leave a five second gap to his team mate to fall back into. George Russell climbed from a pit lane start to take sixth place, beating Sergio Perez who had started more than ten places ahead of the Mercedes. The three final points positions were claimed by midfield teams, with Nico Hulkenberg giving Haas an excellent home grand prix with eighth ahead of the two rookies in the field, Liam Lawson on his return to Formula 1 in ninth and Franco Colapinto thrilling the Argentinians in attendance with 10th.

But while the late controversy dominated the discussions post-race, this was perhaps the best day Ferrari had enjoyed since Vasseur had taken the helm of F1’s most famous time. This had been Ferrari winning by being the best team on the day. Reflecting the growth of Ferrari as a team under Vasseur’s leadership, strategist Ravin Jain was chosen to accept the trophy on behalf of his team – Ferrari now no longer a laughing stock for its hapless decision-making on the pit wall.

With five rounds still remaining, Norris’s prospects of catching Verstappen for the title had suffered a blow in Texas. But Leclerc and Ferrari did not care about that. Instead, they now looked to try and do something they and the Dallas Cowboys have not achieved for many years – win a championship of their own.

“For the constructors, if we do everything perfect until the end of the season, no matter what McLaren does, if we do better than them, I think we can still clinch that title,” Leclerc bullishly admitted after the race.

“Never say never.”

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