Mercedes arrived in Austin having won every pole since the hybrid turbo era began in 2014, but they appeared to have lost their edge early.
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Max Verstappen overcame a daring lap by title rival Lewis Hamilton to take pole position at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas in front of a raucous 120,000-strong crowd. Verstappen looked quick in final practise – his Red Bull team appeared to have made significant gains overnight – and carried that into qualifying, where he held off Hamilton to take pole with a 1m32.910s. Mercedes arrived in Austin having won every pole since the hybrid turbo era began in 2014, but they appeared to have lost their edge early in qualifying, with Hamilton trailing the field by 0.399s in Q2.
Hamilton found more pace in the final runs of Q3, and was a quarter-second faster after two sectors, but lost time in the third, and while he took provisional pole by a fraction, Verstappen was faster behind him. Despite the fact that light rain began to fall in the final few seconds, Verstappen kept his foot in and carried the momentum through the final sequence of corners to take pole, with teammate Sergio Perez finishing third.
“It was quite exciting out there,” said pole-sitter Verstappen. “In Q3, my first lap wasn’t amazing, and then in the final lap it also started spitting – like a bit of drizzle in the last sector especially – so I was not sure I was going to hang on to my lap time, but it was enough and of course to put the lap time in and be in pole position – but also to be P1 and P3 as a team – I think was a very strong performance.”
Valtteri Bottas’ second Mercedes was fourth, but he will drop to ninth due to a five-place grid penalty for exceeding his engine allocation. This moves Charles Leclerc up one position to fourth, edging out teammate Carlos Sainz. McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo was eighth, ahead of teammate Lando Norris, with AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda rounding out the top ten.
Mercedes took the lead early on, with Bottas taking provisional pole, 0.089s faster than Hamilton, and Norris finishing third. However, Perez’s first run was enough to propel him to the top of the standings, 0.19s ahead of Verstappen, as Red Bull commanded the front row with one final run remaining. Hamilton found something special on his second attempt and was on track to set Verstappen a difficult task. However, he dropped two tenths in the final sector and only managed to finish in P1.
Verstappen took advantage of the opportunity to claim his fourth pole in six races, ninth of the season, and Red Bull’s first front row start in Austin since 2013, with his title rival lining up alongside him in second for the seventh time this season. Perez made only his third top-three start of 2021, missing out on the front row by 0.015s, while Leclerc made back-to-back top four starts thanks to his promotion following Bottas’ penalty. Ferrari will have two cars in the top five on the grid for the first time since Baku, 11 races ago, with Sainz promoted to fifth.
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