Starting Grid 2019 US F1 GP

Grid spaces on the start/ finish straight

Event: USA F1 Grand Prix
Track: Circuit of The Americas

Start time: 13:10 (local) | 17:10 GMT | 12:10 PT

Valtteri Bottas scored his 5th pole of the season. His last pole before this one was at Silverstone where he finished 2nd.
Whether or not he will win the US GP will depend very much on the start of the race and the run to turn 1.

Start Grid 2019 US F1 GP

Penalties:

• Sergio Perez, Racing Point no.11 has to start from the pit lane for ignoring the weighbridge call during practice.

2019 US F1 GP Strategy

The strategies all look very close for the 56-lap United States Grand Prix. Fastest is a one-stopper, using the soft for 22 to 25 laps and the medium for 31 to 34 laps. Second fastest is another one-stopper, using the medium for 24 to 27 laps and the hard for 29 to 32 laps. Finally, using the soft for 19 to 22 laps and the hard for 34 to 37 laps constitutes the third-fastest strategy. But there's really very little to choose between any of them, so we could see a lot of different tactics in play tomorrow.

There's also a viable two-stopper, which is also competitive. It goes like this: use two sets of soft for 15 to 18 laps, then medium for 20 to 26 laps. All four strategies detailed here could work well at the Circuit of the Americas, depending of course on the degradation rate of the soft tyre in particular. This will be influenced by weather and track conditions on race day: we saw at the last grand prix in Mexico the sort of difference that these can make.

Race notes:

• Pit stops. There could be a very wide range of pit stop tactics seen, as was the case at the Circuit of the Americas last year. We'll probably see both one and two pit stops, depending on race day track conditions.
• Weather. While still quite cool, conditions were considerably warmer than they were yesterday, and this trend is expected to continue tomorrow as well.
• McLaren. The team has been fast all weekend, with Lando Norris sealing P3 in FP3 this morning, P1 in Q1, and both cars starting in the top 10.
• Red soft tyres. This is theoretically around a second per lap faster than the medium, but the top five on the grid (both Mercedes and Ferraris, plus the Red Bull of Max Verstappen) will start on the medium, with those immediately behind them starting on the soft. In race conditions, this performance gap between the two compounds is expected to come down significantly.

✅ Check out 2019 US F1 GP Qualifying Report & Classification
✅ Check out 2019 F1 Championship Standings

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