Lewis Hamilton was bouyant about his chances at Austin but his car’s tyres and underfloor plank were his undoing
There was an agonising decision on the Mercedes pitwall on lap 16 of the US Grand Prix which in hindsight they got wrong. It possibly cost Lewis Hamilton the team’s first win of the season. At that point Hamilton was running second to Lando Norris’s McLaren and around 4sec ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. Thermal degradation of the rear tyres is always the race day limitation around this place and everyone came into it expecting to stop twice. The pitstop loss here is 21sec and even stopping twice requires the driver to manage the tyres.
The two best cars on tyres are the Red Bull and Mercedes. Norris was leading the race but it was apparent that the McLaren’s tyre deg was higher and that he looked sure to be caught by both Hamilton and Verstappen. When Red Bull brought Verstappen in on lap 16, he was 4sec behind Hamilton and 7sec off Norris. His medium tyres were exchanged for a fresh set of the same, confirming he would need to stop again to meet the two-compound obligation. McLaren responded a lap later with Norris and switched him to the hards. It was a slower tyre but McLaren had no fresh mediums left, having used up an extra set in practice.