Formula 1
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Updated 46s ago
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has won the United States Grand Prix.
The Dutchman’s victory means he is now just 40 points behind world championship leader Oscar Piastri, who could only finish fifth.
His McLaren team-mate, Lando Norris, battled back to reclaim second from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who finished third.
In addition to Gianpiero Lambiase, Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies also came over the radio to congratulate Max Verstappen on his victory in the moments after the race ended: "Well done Max. That was proper domination. What you said, you got everything this weekend."
Verstappen responded: "Really happy with that. Let's try and keep this momentum up!"
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And what does Max Verstappen do as he jumps out of the car? He does a little drum of his thighs with his palms, and heads over to his team for the celebrations — exuding the persona of someone who’s just forgotten to take his keys out of the car.
This is routine stuff for the four-time world champion, and yet we could be seeing a very special charge unfold.
In the end, Max Verstappen won by just shy of eight seconds from Lando Norris — but it might have well been light-years.
That was the Red Bull dominance we’ve been used to in recent seasons, and it doesn’t half set up the coming races to round of 2025.
It will not be a comfortable week for McLaren, leading into Mexico.
DNF: Carlos Sainz (Williams)
Gianpiero Lambiase congratulates Max Verstappen for his race win: "Another very impressive weekend Max, extremely well done, enjoy the celebrations."
Verstappen responds: "Yeah well done mate. Unbelievable weekend, really, really good. Thank you very much everyone."
Lando Norris comes home in second and Charles Leclerc completes the podium places.
Some drama for P4 in the closing moments as Lewis Hamilton's car is compromised on the final lap and Oscar Piastri pushes hard to catch him but can't quite make up the gap.
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Max Verstappen's unlikely championship charge continues with his third grand prix victory in four races!
Lap 55/56
To give you an idea of how devoid this race is of drama now that Norris has pulled a five-second gap over Leclerc, the only battle worth watching on track is currently between the two Alpine drivers … in P17 and P18.
Norris made two critical differences in attacking Leclerc there – the Turn 1 dive showed how much closer he was, then he made sure to get to the inside for Turn 12. But the biggest factor in the whole thing was Leclerc's tires finally starting to cry enough. He had nothing to give on traction onto any of the straights.
Lap 52/56
Leclerc's engineer immediately comes over the radio to tell him to keep the pressure up on Norris given the McLaren driver has three strikes for track limits, meaning one more will see him given a five-second time penalty.
Lap 51/56
For the second time today, Norris gets Leclerc at Turn 12 at the end of the straight! The race win is out of sight with Verstappen nearly 9 seconds up the road, but Norris now stands to gain eight points on Piastri today.
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Lap 51/56
Norris dives down the inside of Leclerc at Turn 1, but the Ferrari driver saw the move coming and switches back to immediately regain P2. This battle is far from over, though.
Lap 50/56
Norris is one of only three drivers currently within DRS range of the one in front of him, and the other two are Hadjar and Bortoleto down in P17 and P19.
All eyes on this battle!
Lap 49/56
Norris is now within DRS range of Leclerc, reducing the gap to 0.9 seconds. Game on!
Lap 48/56
Verstappen's lead over Leclerc is holding steady around 6.8 seconds. What a stress-free drive he's enjoyed today.
Meanwhile, Norris has reduced his gap to Leclerc to 1.4 seconds. We could yet still see some action here.
Lap 46/56
Zak Brown comes on the Sky Sports broadcast and laments that if Norris "had got past Leclerc earlier, we might have given Max a race, but we didn't."
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Norris is not sounding happy on the radio. "I'm just slow," he tells race engineer Will Joseph, who replies that they need to be patient, let the tires cool down, "and then we'll go and get Leclerc."
Crucially, he's making a five-point gain on Piastri in the title race as things stand, so needs to be smart.
Sometimes even a quiet F1 race can feel like it’s simmering away nicely ahead of coming to the boil over the final laps.
This one? Not so much. We’re basically relying on the tires doing something the teams did not expect to shake up the final quarter of this race — and I’m not sure we’re going to get it.
Charles Leclerc and Ferrari have done such a good job as spoiler through their tire choices.
Lap 44/56
The smallest gap in the top 10 is currently Norris 2.6 seconds behind Leclerc.
Out: Sainz
