Verstappen victorious again after 4 months, won unchallenged at the Texas Sprint

Max Verstappen, in a Red Bull RB20 reminiscent of its good old self, made the perfect start and led from the starting lights to the checkered flag to win his fourth Sprint of the year, in Austin, Texas and in 19th this year’s Formula 1 race.

He was followed throughout the race by McLaren’s Lando Norris: the Englishman made perhaps his best start of the year which saw him move from 4th to 2nd in the first lap as he passed Charles Leclerc and George Russell who were starting in front of him in the Ferraris and Mercedes respectively.

Norris maintained a gap of around 1.5 seconds on Verstappen until about the 10th of 19 laps of this short race as he tried to conserve his tires with the ambition of launching a late attack on the Dutchman.

When Russell began to experience extensive tire wear on his front left wheel, the two Ferrari drivers took the opportunity to pass him. So Saint moved up to 3rd and Leclerc to 4th – putting a bow on Norris as the Ferrari proved quite good at managing the medium tire (which all 20 drivers started on).

And while Norris began to fend off the Ferrari attacks, a mistake by the Englishman on the brakes at the first turn on the final lap allowed Saint to pass, and move up to 2nd.

Leclerc tried to do the same, but – with Norris changing direction twice on the brakes – the Monegasque at the last minute prevented his Ferrari from crashing into the McLaren’s tail, settling for 4th.

The top six was closed by George Russell and Lewis Hamilton with the two Mercedes, which – due to the increase in temperature in sunny Austin today and consequently the increase in thermal tire wear – were unable to display the speed they had yesterday in a race pace in round one of the ranking tests.

Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg scored an impressive result for Haas (and three valuable points) in the heavily upgraded VF-24. Further back, Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri, who crashed in yesterday’s Sprint Qualifying, emerged victorious from the battle with Yuki Tsunoda to round out the top ten.

Piastri held on to 10th place despite being handed a 5′ penalty for pushing Pierre Gasly off the track earlier in his battle with the Alpine Frenchman.

After the Sprint race, at 01:00 tonight (early Saturday to Sunday) comes tomorrow’s (10/20) mainly US GP Qualifying Test – stay tuned to the SPORT24 Liveblog.