Circuit of The Americas
Lap data
Lap length 5.513km (3.426 miles)
Race laps 56
Race distance 308.728km (191.835 miles)
Pole position Right-hand side of the track
Lap record* 1’39.347 (Sebastian Vettel, 2012)
Fastest lap 1’35.657 (Sebastian Vettel, 2012, qualifying three)
Maximum speed 314kph (195.11 mph)
Distance from grid to turn one 363m
UK Times
Friday 21st October 2016
United States Grand Prix Free Practice 1: 10:00-11:30 (UK time: 16:00-17:30)
United States Grand Prix Free Practice 2: 14:00-15:30 (UK time: 20:00-21:30)
Saturday 22nd October 2016
United States Grand Prix Free Practice 3: 10:00-11:00 (UK time: 16:00-17:00)
United States Grand Prix Qualifying: 13:00 (UK time: 19:00)
Sunday 23rd October 2016
United States Grand Prix: 14:00 (UK time: 19:00)
Previous Winners
2015 United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
2014 United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
2013 Germany Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault
2012 United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes
Videos
Vettel 2012 onboard
Alex Rossi Lotus 49 onboard
Facts From Previous Race
With the 23rd win of his career, Nico Rosberg now has as many race victories as three-times world champion Nelson Piquet: the man who won the titles either side of Rosberg’s father’s 1982 championship.
The younger Rosberg may not be a champion himself, but the Japan win means he is closer to achieving it now than ever before. The minimum he must score in the four remaining races to guarantee the title regardless of what Hamilton does is three second places and one third. He can’t win the title in the USA race but could at the round after: the Mexican Grand Prix.
It is now mathematically impossible for any non-Mercedes driver to win the drivers’ championship. The Mercedes team also put a lock on the 2016 constructors’ championship. They are the fifth team in history to win three constructors’ championships in a row, joining Ferrari (1975-77 and 1999-2004), McLaren (1988-91), Williams (1992-94) and Red Bull (2010-13).
Hamilton’s poor reliability isn’t the only factor which has worked against him in the championship fight: His starts have too.
The statistics on this can be misleading. Rosberg’s net position change on lap one is much worse than Hamilton (25 places lost compared to nine) and Rosberg has ended lap one in a lower position than he started more times than his team mate (six to four).
But Hamilton’s starts have been more frequently damaging to his race-winning hopes. Every time he’s lost places at the start he’s given away at least five, ruining those chances of victory. Rosberg’s losses of position were almost entirely accounted for by two races, Canada and Malaysia. The worst of those, in Malaysia, was not due to a slow getaway by Rosberg and the damage it did was eradicated by Hamilton’s retirement
Those four bad starts have cost Hamilton dearly. Had he held his position at each of them he would have gained an extra 27 points and deprived Rosberg of 21 more. That 48-point swing is significant: Hamilton now trails Rosberg by 33.
Rosberg took the 30th pole position of his career by the slender margin of 13 thousandths of a second. At his average speed of 230.622kph, that’s a gap of just 83 centimetres. This was the closest front row since Hamilton beat Rosberg to pole at Singapore in 2014 by seven thousandths of a second.
It was Rosberg’s third pole position at Suzuka but until this race he had never won at the Japanese circuit. Hamilton remains yet to score a pole position at this track: his two Japanese Grand Prix poles occurred when the race was held at Fuji in 2007 and 2008.
Hamilton’s third place finish was the 100th podium appearance of his career. He’s the third driver to reach this century after Prost and Michael Schumacher.
Valtteri Bottas made his 73rd start in a grand prix last weekend. As all of them have been with Williams, he exceeded Jim Clark’s tally for the longest career spent entirely with the same team. Clark started all 72 of his races with Lotus. This record was previously beaten by Hamilton when he was at McLaren, prior to his switch to Mercedes.
Haas got both their drivers into Q3 for the first time ever. Seventh on the grid for Romain Grosjean is their highest starting position to date, but he very nearly started two places higher.
Grosjean’s lap time was measured as the same as Sergio Perez’s to within one-thousandth of a second. Perez started ahead because he had set his lap time first, but Grosjean revealed he had lost a few precious thousandths when his DRS failed to open. Perez gained an extra place thanks to Sebastian Vettel’s grid penalty, so had it not been for his DRS problem Grosjean would have started fifth.
Adding to Grosjean’s frustration, he posted the seventh finish for Haas this year in eleventh position – the highest place which scores no points. But it could be worse: five of those finishes were scored by team mate Esteban Gutierrez and he, unlike Grosjean, is still yet to score a point this year.
Honda’s home race wasn’t quite as excruciating as it was 12 months ago, but it was little better. As last year Fernando Alonso was the only one of McLaren’s drivers to reach Q2, and he was just 0.178s closer to the fastest time in that session than he was in 2015.
Finally, for only the second time this year all 22 starters finished the race. The other time this happened was in China. However Sunday’s race was also remarkable in that no penalties were handed down to any of the drivers – at least once Mercedes abandoned their protest against Max Verstappen.
Drivers’ Chosen Tyres
Championship Standings
