Five winners, five losers: US Grand Prix
As Kimi Antonelli stands on the precipice of his first world title after victory in Austin, who else had a weekend to remember?
Winner: Kimi Antonelli
If ever there were a weekend to demonstrate exactly why Kimi Antonelli is a deserving world champion, this was it. Team boss Toto Wolff summed it up best, describing his young steed’s performance as: “the race of a champion who isn’t the champion yet”.
The Italian knew he had to win the race at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) to even have a chance of claiming the title, but Ferrari’s pace throughout practice hinted that that first necessary criterion may be out of reach.
Come Saturday, though, Antonelli was there to capitalise as the Scuderia failed to make their pace count in competitive running.
Starting the race on medium tyres while those behind him all started on softs, Antonelli still managed to break a couple of seconds clear by the end of the first lap to escape any potential danger.
Unlike those on the softs, the Mercedes man was also able to make a one-stop strategy work – something that second-placed Charles Leclerc said was “never really on the cards” for anyone else.
Despite forecasts of late attacks from Leclerc and Verstappen, Antonelli was well clear of the pair once they dispatched fellow one-stopper Lando Norris, who was not able to match the pace of the Italian.
Compare all of this to the weekend of George Russell, who qualified sixth and spent most of the race languishing in eighth behind Oscar Piastri following a five-second penalty. The Brit has understandably bemoaned his luck all year, but Australia and Azerbaijan aside has never come close to delivering a performance as convincing as Antonelli’s in Texas.
It would have been a fitting way to seal the championship, but a points finish in Mexico this weekend – or, indeed, at any of the last five races – wraps it up anyway.
Winner: Charles Leclerc
Second place was a fair result for Charles Leclerc this weekend after the Ferrari man showed pace across every session, but was ultimately no match for Antonelli.
The father-to-be has plenty to think about off the track at the moment, but was in imperious form on Friday as he set the benchmark time in the first two practice sessions.
On Sunday, Leclerc ran a counter two-stop strategy to the Mercedes up ahead but was only able to make any inroads in the final handful of laps once he had cleared Norris and Verstappen.
Leclerc’s pace was aided by a couple of floor upgrades brought to Austin by Ferrari, which are reported to be the team’s last of the year.
While it continues to leave the Scuderia lacking in a straight line, the scarlet cars were once again the class of the field at slower speeds with exceptional mechanical grip.
That may well play strongly into the hands of Leclerc and teammate Lewis Hamilton in Mexico this weekend.
Winner: Red Bull
It is with some trepidation that Red Bull are included among this week’s winners, with both Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar lamenting the team’s ability to fight for more points after qualifying second and third.
It is, however, a results business, and it was a big day for Red Bull in the championship as the team finally caught and overtook McLaren in the standings after a long old chase.
The Milton Keynes team has now outscored the reigning champions at the last five races, accruing six podiums (including two victories) to McLaren’s one. That run of results has seen an 83-point deficit post-Monza reduced to zero, with Red Bull now ahead on countback with more second-placed finishes.
Mekies’ men are certainly starting to feel the benefit of having a strong second driver. The sister car to Verstappen’s, whether it be Hadjar or Lawson, has (to date) contributed 33.5% of the team’s points so far in 2026, an astronomical increase on the meagre 6.7% provided by Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda last year, and the highest share since Sergio Pérez in 2022.
There are, of course, plenty more laps still to be driven in 2026, but Red Bull are certainly finishing the year strongly while McLaren look set to end with a whimper.
Winner: Pierre Gasly
It may only have been a point for Pierre Gasly in Austin, but it put an end to his most barren run of the season, in which the Alpine driver had not scored a point in four straight races.
The Frenchman qualified 11th but was bumped up a place following Arvid Lindblad’s penalty, and while his point is unlikely to make any difference in the Constructors’ Standings, it may be enough to hold off the rookie for a top ten finish in the Drivers’ Championship.
It wasn’t a point that came without struggles either, firstly as Gasly was on the receiving end of an opening lap collision with Haas’ Ollie Bearman. He later experienced a slow stop when he switched onto the hard tyres, which prompted plenty of gesticulating from Flavio Briatore and contributed to him spending the rest of the race stuck behind Liam Lawson.
It wasn’t a groundbreaking result by any means, but it put an end to a rotten few races for the team.
Winner: Circuit of the Americas
It was surprisingly hard to find five winners from this race weekend, so a word for COTA, which once again proved itself among the top race circuits on the current calendar.
This Grand Prix wasn’t even remotely close to being among the circuit’s finest and the brand-new VIP building at Turn 1 was a bit of an eyesore, but it was still refreshing to see sustained wheel-to-wheel action between cars up and down the field at various points around the circuit.
The 15-car-wide hairpin of Turn 1, followed by the sweeping Turn 2 into the Esses, always provides entertainment and encourages the occasional lunge, as does the heavy breaking zone into T11 which prompts battles that continue through the Hockenheim-like stadium section.
On the subject of overtakes, Verstappen’s move on Norris at the start of Lap 47 - despite having mirrors full of Charles Leclerc - was one of the moves of the season.
While a closer battle for the lead would have been nice, the fight for second between the aforementioned trio was something you would never dream of at the likes of the Madring or Marina Bay, for example.
Loser: George Russell
Poor as his luck may have been this season, George Russell can have few complaints given his form on weekends when reliability has not been an issue. The Brit has failed to transfer his bulletproof form in Baku to any of the races since and he was once again left wanting for raw speed in Texas.
As teammate Antonelli built up his pace slowly throughout the weekend to take pole and victory, Russell remained languishing towards the back of the chasing pack.
Sixth place on the grid was disappointing enough, but his five-second penalty for gaining an advantage by going off track on Lap 1 was careless.
After serving that penalty, Russell was consigned to a race stuck behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, with any chance of an overtake nullified by the McLaren’s impressive straight-line speed.
Russell did the bare minimum required to keep himself in the title hunt by finishing eighth, just as Hamilton did by finishing fourth, but frankly it might have been better if he were put out of his misery.
Loser: McLaren
Since the end of Lando Norris’ mid-season resurgence which saw back-to-back wins in Hungary and the Netherlands, McLaren’s 2026 campaign has looked in strong danger of petering out.
Never has that been more the case than at COTA, when the Constructors’ Champions of the last two seasons dropped to fourth in the standings behind Red Bull.
Despite straight-line speed that was arguably the class of the field – Norris frustrated Leclerc and Verstappen in their pursuit of Antonelli, while Piastri kept Russell at bay almost all race – the MCL40 is clearly the fourth-best all-round package on the grid.
A fourth-row lockout in Qualifying marked the team’s joint worst Saturday afternoon of the season (tied with Monaco) and the worst at COTA since 2019. Things went little better on Sunday, as Piastri ran a distant seventh with only the second Mercedes for company, while Norris switched mid-race to a one-stop strategy but inevitably fell down the order to fifth late on.
A characteristic of this season has been the fluctuation in relative performance between the top teams as they upgrade their cars at different rates, but as the 2026 cars near their final iterations, it looks as though McLaren have come off worst.
Loser: Williams
In the way that the US Grand Prix encapsulated everything brilliant about Kimi Antonelli’s season to date, it also succinctly reflected Williams’ campaign, albeit in a far less positive manner.
By now it has been widely acknowledged that, despite having publicly pinned large hopes on 2026, the Grove team has endured a truly lacklustre campaign. The reasons for that are manifold, with the most widely cited reason being the fact that the car was so overweight at the start of the year which set its development back significantly.
The problems just continue to arise, though, in every single area. The car is slow and unreliable, the drivers are frustrated and the pitwall is getting basic strategy wrong.
It was 50 minutes into FP1 when the Williams cars finally emerged on track, and with the pace they showed thereafter it seemed as though even Gabriel Bortoleto with his 60-place grid penalty could outqualify them.
Under the watchful eye of former Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams, daughter of Sir Frank, who was present in the garage throughout the weekend, the car was firmly tenth fastest by Qualifying and only half a second ahead of the Cadillacs, who have long been established the runts of the litter.
Alex Albon took to the radio to vent about his run plan, which sent him out for his final lap in Q1 far earlier than his rivals on a circuit that was rapidly evolving. Carlos Sainz, for his part, suffered his worst Saturday afternoon at COTA since 2015.
Sunday continued where Saturday left off, as Albon and Sainz laboured down near the back of the field and finished ahead of only Cadillac’s Sergio Pérez.
James Vowles keeps promising the world for Williams, and attention will now turn, if it hasn’t already, to 2027 – the team’s 50th anniversary. Things simply have to improve.
Loser: Cadillac
It was always going to be a tough debut season for Cadillac, but at what point does it become fair to say that their maiden campaign has been quite disappointing?
It was never likely that the team would particularly excel in front of their home crowd, but it would have been nice from a sporting perspective to see them mixing it with some of those in front.
That wasn’t to be the case, though, as Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas were the two slowest qualifiers for a third straight weekend. It was not until the Hungarian Grand Prix, the tenth round of the season, that this was first the case, but it has quickly become the norm.
Progress throughout this season has been minimal at best, if not downright absent at times, and the dismissal of Graeme Lowdon as Team Principal in August points strongly to a feeling of internal disappointment.
Even an appearance in Q2 continues to elude the team, while Sergio Pérez’s dropped point in Monaco looks even more of a missed opportunity than it did at the time.
Reliability continues to be a serious problem, with either the brakes or the engine, if not both, generally a terminal issue for at least one of the cars during races.
This week it was Valtteri Bottas’ engine which gave up the ghost on Lap 49 and prompted a late virtual safety car, while Pérez was the 19th and final finisher.
Hopefully with a full season under their belts, the team will progress in 2027. 2026, though, has been rather underwhelming.
Loser: Ollie Bearman
Last Sunday in Texas was one of those races where nothing seemed to go right for Ollie Bearman. The young Brit had qualified a decent P13, but an opening lap collision with Gasly set in motion a short and race-ending chain of events.
The incident inflicted significant damage upon Bearman’s car and he was swiftly moved aside to allow undamaged and significantly quicker teammate Esteban Ocon through. Shortly later he was hit with a five-second penalty which left him with no chance of salvaging a positive result.
On Lap 24, the call came from the pitwall for him to come in and retire the car.
Fresh off the back of the Singapore Grand Prix, which was Bearman’s best event since Canada in June, it was not the step forward he would have hoped for.
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