The F1x

• The Out Lap

  • All about the Circuit of the Americas 🇺🇸

  • The championship fight

  • Last big upgrade packages

  • Liveries 

• News From the Week

  • F1 to South Africa?

  • 2025 F1 rule changes

  • Guenther takes shot at Stroll

  • Horner intensifies pressure on Checo for 2025 seat

  • Max says Piastri shouldn’t accept being a second driver

• Predictions

  • Does Lando close the gap?

In addition to how upset we were as a collective the way VCARB/Red Bull handled the Danny Ric situation over the Singapore race weekend, we might be just as sad to be robbed of seeing Ricciardo go full USA mode again…

The Out Lap

About the track:

56 laps / 20 turns / 5.513km / lap record 1:36.169 (Leclerc 2019)

On a regular day COTA is about a 30 minute drive south of Austin, Texas.

The first grand prix held at COTA was in 2012 (the same year the track was opened).

F1 has visited 12 tracks in the USA over its history.

Lewis Hamilton had a first and last at the 2012 race, both winning the first ever race at COTA and winning his final race with McLaren before switching to Mercedes the following year.

Lewis also has the most wins at COTA (5) but Max Verstappen has won each of the last 3 years.

In 2023 both Hamilton and Leclerc were disqualified from the race after post-race scrutineering found their skid planks to be too worn down.

Kimi Raikkonen won his last F1 race for Ferrari at the 2018 running at COTA.

Alex Albon is making his 100th career race start this weekend! His first drive was back in 2019 at the Australian GP.

In 2022 COTA broke a 3-day attendance record after 440,000 people attended the race track over the weekend.

The Championship Fight:

6 races (plus 3 sprints) and 52 points is all that separates Verstappen and Norris.

Does a sprint race result end up deciding the championship? Did Ricciardo’s last lap fastest lap in Singapore?

Earlier this week the always outspoken Helmut Marko had some comments on Lando’s “mental weakness” and how this is one of the reason why Verstappen will win the championship.

Lawson will be serving an 8-place grid penalty to start his new F1 campaign after the previously driven by Ricciardo VCARB needs some new power unit components.

This weekend will mark what might be the last weekend teams will be bringing large upgrade packages to their cars to run till the end of the season. This is the start of one of the two triple headers (and 4 races in a row on this side of the Atlantic Ocean) and it is expected that all of the teams at the front (except Ferrari) will be bringing a decent sized upgrade package to their cars.

We have a few teams showing up with special one off liveries!

Alpine have an Xbox and Indiana Jones video game inspired paint job:

Haas has some new stars and stripes:

McLaren bringing back their Google Chrome livery again:

News From the Week

It has been a few weeks since we last had any action on track and while there is no shortage of stories and talking points. From Ricciardo officially getting swapped out for Liam Lawson, and talk of F1 coming to South Africa.

RULE CHANGES!! Starting next season the fastest lap point is being taken out of the sport. No more late race pit stops to steal an extra point and no more teams helping other teams (VCARB no longer doing favours for RB).

The FIA has also increased the number of FP1 sessions rookies must compete per team, going from 2 to 4.

It is always refreshing when someone as experienced in F1 and someone who has been right in the middle of making driver decisions makes comments that every F1 fan has been thinking for years. Guenther Steiner did just that this week when speaking about Lance Stroll and his immunity in keeping his Aston Martin drive.

Christian Horner gave us some insight to the Red Bull teams expectations for their driver lineup for the 2025 season. There has been rumours circulating that Liam Lawson is actually in contention for the Red Bull seat alongside Max for next year depending how he performs to close out this season.

Speaking with Autosport, Horner stated that Red Bull cannot afford to have this level of performance difference between their two drivers. He mentioned the improvements teams like Ferrari and McLaren have made in combination with their competitive driver lineups.

Max Verstappen gave some high praise to Oscar Piastri, and at the same time probably managed to annoy McLaren who has had a tough go of things this year when deciding who to back in a race.

Predictions