Before the start of the United States Grand Prix the grid paid tribute to Dietrich Mateschitz with a minute’s music and applause, fitting for a man who, despite his reclusive nature, forged a reputation synonymous with the extreme.
By the end of the race he’d been honoured by his team’s first world constructors world title in nine years, completing the double triumph off the back of Max Verstappen’s drivers championship last round.
A Red Bull-backed driver dominating the race in a Red Bull-owned team — having cut his teeth, of course, in the Red Bull-owned junior team — was a reminder of just how influential Mateschitz had been in Formula 1 across the last two decades.
Despite what turned out to be a comfortable victory, Verstappen’s win came with twists and turns in what ended up being an eventful second trip to the United States for the year, with some standout midfield performances — and unfortunately one real shocker — not only defining the late part of this season but giving us some glimpses at 2023 as well.
RED BULL RACING WINS ITS FIRST CONSTRUCTORS CHAMPIONSHIP UNDER OWN POWER — SORT OF
After a long time in the Mercedes-enforced wilderness, Red Bull Racing is emphatically back at the top of the pile in Formula 1, completing the 2022 championship double.
Victory and fourth place in the United States extended the team’s advantage over Ferrari to an unassailable 187 points, comfortably eclipsing the 147 available in the final three rounds.
It’s been nine years since Milton Keynes last won the constructors crown, way back in the days of the peak of Sebastian Vettel’s powers, which was also the last time it brought home both titles in the same season.
It was the ushering in of the turbo-hybrid era that ended the team’s four seasons of dominance, in part thanks to Renault’s rocky start to life as an engine supplier under those rules.
It’s therefore somehow fitting — and perhaps, the team may argue, justification for its years of Renault sledging in the dying days of that partnership — that technically Red Bull Racing claimed its first constructors title of this generation with its own power unit.
The trophy will officially bear the inscription Red Bull Racing-RBPT — that is, the very clunkily named Red Bull Racing-Red Bull Powertrains.
Of course that badge is attached to a Honda power unit designed, built, assembled and owned by Sakura.
That makes this championship doubly meaningful, being the first teams title powered by Honda since 1991, even if its bizarre decision to withdraw from the sport just as its project came to fruition means it won’t be officially recognised in the record book.
It puts a fresh spotlight on Honda’s recent announcement that it was restrengthening ties with Red Bull Racing through to the end of this power unit era, including with high-profile branding and an acknowledgment that the power unit is a joint operation, albeit without restoring the name on the badge.
It’s been long speculated that Honda will attempt to return to Formula 1 from 2026 in some form, and after the breakdown of talks between Red Bull and Porsche, there’s a clear opening for a joint venture in which Honda contributes its electrical motor know-how to Red Bull’s already existing internal combustion engine development.
If that comes to fruition, perhaps then this title will be formally recognised as belonging to Honda along with Red Bull Racing, even if the chance to get the name on the trophy has passed.
MERCEDES BUOYED BY NEAR WIN BUT BIG FIXES STILL NEEDED
Lewis Hamilton came close to depriving Red Bull Racing from claiming the constructors title with a win when he unexpectedly took the lead late in the race after a botched pit stop for Max Verstappen.
The team momentarily dreamt of taking its first win of the season, but Verstappen’s straight-line speed and traction with softer tyres made his victory bid irresistible.
And it should be remembered that Hamilton was only in contention to begin with because of that pit stop mistake, because the sister Red Bull Racing and Ferrari cars started in penalised grid positions and because Carlos Sainz was punted out of the race by his Mercedes teammate.
It’s certainly debatable whether in more normal circumstances, even with the pit stop, whether Hamilton would’ve been in such an envious position.
Nonetheless, it was a positive showing on a weekend the team brought its last major update of the season, which was buoying for two reasons.
First, it gave the team a boost in race pace that put it in the frame to capitalise on Red Bull Racing’s mistakes and seemed to put it roughly on par with Ferrari, even if its single-lap pace is still lacking.
Second, the fact it’s spending on upgrades this season rather than piling it all into research and development for 2023 suggests the team is increasingly confident about where it’s gone wrong this season and about its direction for next season.
Could it win a race this season? The clock is ticking, but the Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos should suit it, and tiny racing bowl has a habit of generating some wacky circumstances from which the team could capitalise.
ALONSO’S AWKWARD ASTON ENCOUNTER
The first rule of racing is to never crash into your teammate, and while Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll get off on the technicality of not wearing the same overalls for another two months, smashes like this will take some ironing out.
Alonso was closing in fast on Stroll down the back straight and at the final moment pulled out of his slipstream to make the pass on the run to turn 11.
Stroll, desperate to hold seventh place, having qualified a lofty fifth but having already been passed by teammate Sebastian Vettel, jinked to the right in what can only be described as a botched defence.
The move triggered what came very close to being an aeroplane accident.
The Aston Martin was written off with a badly damaged left-hand side that ended up mostly spread along the circuit.
Alonso’s Alpine was launched into the air, thudding heavily back to earth and sliding into the barriers. Incredibly it was able to continue to pit lane, and in what the Spaniard is sure to add to his burgeoning portfolio of best-ever drives, he brought it home in seventh place.
The stewards waited until after the race to adjudicate, perhaps in a sign that already it was clear Alonso wasn’t going to be the one to receive a penalty.
In the end they needed only two sentences to summarise their position.
“It was clear to us that the driver of Car 18 made a late move in reacting to the overtaking attempt by the driver of Car 14 by moving to the left,” said the ruling. “The stewards determine that the driver of Car 18 was predominantly to blame.”
Stroll will serve a three-place grid penalty next weekend in Mexico.
Stroll’s reputation as a pay driver has often maligned him unfairly as something worse than the fairly solid midfield driver he is — which, given he’s only 23 years old, is an achievement not to be sniffed at.
It’s also fair to say Alonso isn’t completely immune from errors, though they’re vanishingly rare and tend to be borne of overdriving rather than inattentiveness.
But this kind of clumsy, borderline reckless defence illustrated as clearly as anything could the chasm in quality between the future teammates — and sets up what could be a revealing and painful set-up for the team next season when they share a garage.
VETTEL SUPERB IN CAREER’S FINAL MONTHS
While Stroll struggled, his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, was putting in a one of his season’s best drive attempting to recover from a poor qualifying result that put him fifth on the grid
The German is enjoying a real upturn in form in the second half of his final season in Formula 1, spurred on in part by his improving machinery.
The Aston Martin car was on son in Austin, and he wielded it beautifully off the line to climb five places on the first lap.
He was among the most responsive to the revelation that the medium tyre was lasting longer than expected before the race, and extending his opening stint paid massive dividends by getting him a cheap stop behind the first safety car, which put him up to fourth.
He then delayed his second stop until past lap 40, momentarily taking the lead — and completing his 3500th and 3501st laps in the lead, the third most of any driver in history — and was looking food for a big points haul.
A slow stop seemingly put paid to that, but what followed was some absolutely vintage Vettel wheel-to-wheel combat to secure eighth.
He cut his way past Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu, pulled a marvellous move on Alex Albon around the outside of turns 17 and 18, and took his final place off Kevin Magnussen with a daring bit of driving through the final sector.
It was a reminder of what Formula 1 is set to lose once Vettel hangs up the helmet at the end of the season — and, perhaps more to the point, how good he can be when the car and the team is working for him, which hasn’t always been the case dating back even to his seasons at Ferrari.
RICCIARDO FINDS NEW LOW IN YEAR OF TOIL
It’s a shame that Daniel Ricciardo’s final months with McLaren aren’t going nearly as well, and Austin was another reminder of just how confounded he is by the car that may prove to have killed his career.
He was off the pace in qualifying, eliminated in Q1 for the third time in the last five races, and his race was bereft of bright spots aside from his typically punchy start and restart performances.
He wasn’t helped by the unfortunate timing of his first pit stop, which came shortly before the first safety car, but his final stint laid bare his difficulties.
He second pit stop dropped him to the back of the back, and despite spending most of that final stint in clear air, his pace was woeful.
When he rejoined the track from his second stop he was 16 seconds down on Lando Norris, who was three places ahead of him on the road.
By the end of the race, 20 laps later, he’d shipped 20 seconds to his teammate despite Norris passing nine cars during that time.
“We’ve got a bit to look at to understand the pace,” his engineer, Tom Stallard, said in downcast tones over team radio on the cool-down lap. “The race pace was lacking a little bit, as you know, but we’ll figure that out in the week and come back stronger in Mexico.”
After the race Ricciardo admitted he was short on answers other than a lack of confidence in the car.
“Honestly, it’s 2022,” he said. “It’s been just so far off the pace that I simply can’t lean on it, can’t push, can’t get the time out of it.
“The inconsistency through the lap times shows that it really is a struggle, but to have such a big margin again — it remains a mystery.
“When you think it can’t get worse, it does.”
During the weekend he said he was close to finalising his 2023 plans, tipped to be a reserve drive at Mercedes, but inexplicable performances like these won’t be doing him any favours.
BRUNDLE DEALT YET ANOTHER AWKWARD US GRID RUN-IN
A final note to the stoic Martin Brundle, who must’ve been bracing himself in the weeks leading up to the United States Grand Prix for one of the year’s most difficult grid walks.
Last year he had one of his highest profile grid run-ins when he was rebuked by an unnecessarily large entourage of rapper Megan Thee Stallion while attempting a pre-race interview.
Despite Formula 1 having reportedly implemented what’s been termed a ‘Brundle clause’ for grid access — supposedly bodyguards were to be banned from the grid, surely one of the most secure sporting locations in the world — the same happened again this year when the Sky pundit tried to hit up Brad Pitt.
In fact Sky’s broadcast clearly captures some overzealous minder attempting to pull Brundle out of the frame of his own live TV segment.
Pitt was on location in part to work on his upcoming Formula 1 film, which will be directed by Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski and co-produced by Lewis Hamilton. You’d think answering a few questions to the de facto worldwide English-language broadcaster would’ve been the bare minimum he could’ve managed given the amount of access he’s receiving from F1, which the sport says includes shooting in the paddock on race weekends, an absolutely unprecedented level of access.
Indeed some inside Formula 1 must be wondering what the point of all these celebrities is when so many refuse to be seen or interviewed at the event.
