What a race in Las Vegas! The chaos at the start, Norris' accident, the fight between the Red Bulls and Leclerc. Let's go and retrace all the emotions of this GP.
The race begins with Max Verstappen who starts better than Charles Leclerc in the first meters, the braking sinks and accompanies the Monegasque off the track, overtaking him. Meanwhile, behind them Fernando Alonso turns around during an overtaking attempt, ruining his and Sergio's race Perez and Valtteri Bottas.
At the same moments, Sainz hits Hamilton as he tries to overtake him: the Spaniard turns around, while the Brit emerges unscathed. Only a few laps pass and he enters the track safety car. Landau Norris he lost control of the car and went on the wall.
On lap 16, while Russell (third) returns to the pits, Leclerc he gains time on Verstappen, who is in trouble with his tyres, and sticks to his Red Bull. Verstappen returns to the pits to change his tires and serve the 5 second penalty. After the pitstop, the Dutchman returns to the track behind Russell.
Meanwhile, behind them, Hamilton overtakes Piastres. The two touch lightly, causing a puncture to both cars. Piastri returns to the track 13th, while Hamilton drops to 18th position after the pit stop.
Leclerc also makes his pitstop: 3.9 seconds. He falls back into third place, behind the leader Perez (stopped on the first lap) and to Stroll (which has yet to stop), but is virtually in the lead. It remains to be assessed whether Perez will make a second stop: there is not enough data to know if the hard tires can last the entire race.
Verstappen overtakes Russell, English it tightens the trajectory too much and damages both his Mercedes and the Red Bull number 1. Lots of debris on the track, even though the cars are not extremely damaged: the car then comes out safety car.
Take advantage of it Perez, who returns to the pits for his second stop, as do Sainz (first stop), Verstappen, Russell, Stroll and Hamilton. Upon restarting, Piastres surprises Gasly and takes third position, behind Leclerc and Perez. In the meantime, Russell receives 5 second penalty for the contact with Verstappen.
On the 32nd lap of 50, Perez overtakes Leclerc and returns to the lead. With white tyre, Leclerc struggles quite a bit. Meanwhile, Ocon (started from the back of the grid after being eliminated in Q1 yesterday) passes his teammate Gasly (who started fourth) for fifth position, despite the team telling him to maintain his positions.
On lap 35, Leclerc takes advantage of Perez's highly charged set-up to regain the lead of the race, while Verstappen joins the fight in third position. Two laps pass and Verstappen first overtakes Perez and then gains the lead at the expense of Leclerc.
Probably due to graining, Leclerc goes long and gives the 1-2 to Red Bull with 7 laps to go. While in, Piastres he was forced to stop to put on medium tires as he had done 2 stints on hard tyres. At the last lap, when everything seems over, Leclerc he regains second position from Perez with a textbook braking performance.
Verstappen he goes to win, therefore, in front of Leclerc e Perez. Russell, in a comeback, finished fourth but was relegated to eighth due to the penalty. Or with he took advantage of this to finish fourth after starting 16th. Excellent work by Stroll, fifth, in front of Sainz, Hamilton, Russell, Alonso and Piastri.
gasly collapses to 11th position, as well as Albon, 12th after defending himself in the top 10 for the first 40 laps. They follow Magnussen, Ricciardo, Sargeant and the unfortunate Bottas. Retire in the final stages, however, Tsunoda and Hulkenberg.
With this result, Perez mathematically wins the title of runner-up of the world, giving Red Bull the first 1-2 world championship in history. Sainz he regains fourth position in a dead heat with Alonso, with Norris sixth with 5 points e Leclerc seventh, 7 points behind Norris. There Ferrari take advantage of Leclerc's performance to reduce the gap to Mercedes only 4 points. There's still a lot to play for in Abu Dhabi in a week's time!
