Hamilton crowned World Champion with USGP victory

F1 Grand Prix, GP USA, Circuit of The Americas

Lewis Hamilton has taken victory at the United States Grand Prix, a result that was enough to seal his third F1 World Championship. Nico Rosberg made it another one-two finish for Mercedes AMG F1 while Sebastian Vettel finished third for Ferrari.

Ahead of the race, the grid was considerably altered due to various penalties, including a 10 place grid penalty for each Ferrari due to a change of engines. Valtteri Bottas also dropped down into 16th. As such, Rosberg started from P1, ahead of Hamilton, Ricciardo, Kvyat, Perez, Hulkenberg, Massa, Verstappen, Alonso and Grosjean.

All did so on inters as well, as the rain stopped an hour before the start and has allowed the track to slowly dry up. At the time of the start, some areas were perhaps dry enough for slicks, while others still proved too wet.

As the lights went out, Hamilton made the best start from the front to take the lead, pushing Rosberg off track on the exit of turn 1. This also made him drop down behind Kvyat, Ricciardo and Perez to settle into 5th.

Vettel meanwhile made a great start, up from 16th to 9th in half a lap while Fernando Alonso dropped down from 9th to 19th. The Spaniard has made a very solid start but got ran into by Valtteri Bottas through turn 1.

Both Sauber drivers also made a mess of their starts, hitting each other halfway through lap 2, breaking the front wing of Nasr. So, for various incidents in the first lap, Grosjean, Rossi, Alonso, Stevens, Nasr and Bottas all entered the pits, with only Bottas and Nasr changing to soft slicks.

Another lap later, Nasr returned to the pits once again, switching back to intermediates. One lap later, Bottas also realised the track was too slippery for slicks and pitted for a switch back, even though the front runners were already running off the racing line to cool their intermediate tyres.

Meanwhile, as debris in Turn 1 and Turn 3 prevented close fighting, a virtual safety car period was activated to allow marshalls to remove some bits from the track.

On lap 7, Bottas retired from the race, immediately rolling into the garage with a probably technical issue. Will Stevens had meanwhile already retired his Manor a few laps earlier.

When the safety car period ended, Rosberg immediately took advantage of it to move ahead of Ricciardo into third place, taking Kvyat as well half a lap later.

By lap 10, the four leaders were still very closely matched, each one of them around 0.7s separated from each other. Perez in 5th posed no threat to them, running 6 seconds down, but closely followed by Vettel, Verstappen, Raikkonen and Sainz.

That same lap, Grosjean pitted to change to softs, but wasn't able to use them at their maximum as he had to move across for the leaders. One lap later, he pitted again, this time to retire from the race, still leaving other teams without a reference to see if the time was right to make the tyre switch.

On lap 13, Kvyat attempted to have a go on Rosberg, but ultimately failed and went wide. Rosberg was surprised and hindered by the move, allowing Ricciardo to make a dive into Turn 1 and move up into second place.

In 5th place, Perez really started to form a train, forcing Raikkonen into a fierce battle with the Toro Rosso's he was sandwitched in between.

On lap 15, Ricciardo surprised Hamilton out of Turn 17 to take the lead and went on to quickly pull a reasonable advantage, lapping almost 2 seconds quicker than Hamilton on lap 16.

On lap 17, Ericsson switched to softs, followed by Button the next lap. As Hamilton eventually also got past by Rosberg, he too decided to take the gamble and change his destroyed intermediates to softs. Vettel, Verstappen, Massa, Maldonado and Rossi all followed suit in that same lap.

On lap 20, all those who were still on inters pitted for softs. By that time, Ricciardo has 4.7 seconds in hand over Rosberg.

At about the same time, Raikkonen's car twitched into Turn 18, sending him off into the barriers. The Finn though didn't give up, wiggling the steering wheel and powering hard to get away. He eventually managed to do so, returning back to the pits immediately for a new nose, and rejoining the track in 15th place.

On lap 22, Rosberg took the race lead while Hamilton passed Kvyat for third. It was about time for Hamilton though, as Vettel's Ferrari worked brilliantly on softs to close the gap rapidly. 2 laps later, the inevitable was done as Vettel easily passed Kvyat through Turn 1, moving him up into 4th, 3.4 seconds down on Hamilton in third.

On lap 26, Hamilton also passed Ricciardo to take second, 10 seconds down on his leading team mate.

One lap later, Raikkonen had to retire due to high brake temperatures while Ericsson came to a halt on the back straight, forcing a safety car to allow the marshalls to get him off the track. This obviously annulled Rosberg's advantage and triggered many to perform a stop.

After an impossibly long SC, the racing got back underway on lap 32. Interestingly, after the stops, Vettel, Hulkenberg, Perez, Sainz and Rossi switched to medium tyres. As neither Mercedes or Red Bull pitted, Vettel was back down in 5th, but by Turn 1 he moved up into 4th thanks to a mistake from Kvyat, running wide to make that an extremely easy pass.

Vettel then also moved ahead of Ricciardo, but behind them a close fight formed, which eventually caused Hulkenberg to crash with Kvyat. Hulkenberg retired immediately while Kvyat managed to keep going in 5th, ahead of Ricciardo but by that time behind Verstappen who made great use of his brand new soft tyres to progress through the pack.

A virtual safety car period followed to remove Hulkenberg's car, triggering Rosberg to pit for a new tyres. Kvyat and Ricciardo did the same thing that same lap, all taking on soft tyres.

As the VSC period ended, Hamilton had not pitted and chose to first assess the tyres to see what to do. He only had 5.3 seconds on Vettel and 1 more on Rosberg.

3 more laps furhter into the race, Kvyat smashes his car into the barrier head on out of Turn 19, spinning on the wet paches past the kerb stones. Hamilton subsequently pitted, as well as Vettel and Ricciardo. Button pitted a lap later and rejoined in 8th, behind Ricciardo.

Positions behind the SC were then Rosberg, Hamilton, Verstappen, VEttel, Alonso, Perez, Ricciardo, Button, Maldonado, Sainz, Rossi and Nasr.

2 laps later, with the pressure on, Rosberg failed to keep his car on track at Turn 3, handing the lead to Hamilton.

Further back, Alonso held everyone up behind him due to running on worn softs. His non-stop quickly turned out to be a bad decision as he subsequently dropped down the order, with Button first passing after profiting from a touch between Sainz and Ricciardo, and next up almost everybody in the pack got ahead.

By lap 51, Alonso was down to 10th, ahead only of Rossi and Ricciardo, the latter having pitted to fix his car's damage. The Spaniard however reported a loss of power from his Honda engine, saying h'd pit, only to be told to stay out as they were still running in the points.

Positions were more or less sealed after that, even though Vettel came very close to take second place. In the last last, Button managed to get back 6th from Sainz while Alonso failed to keep Ricciardo behind, eventually losing the final points scoring position in the final sector of the last lap.