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 1’34.999 (Lewis Hamilton, 2016, qualifying three)
Maximum speed 333kph (206.917 mph)
DRS zone/s (race) First and second straight
Distance from grid to turn one 364m
Full throttle 59%
Longest flat-out section 1090m
Downforce level Medium
Gear changes per lap 66
Fuel use per lap 1.88kg
Time penalty per lap of fuel 0.071s
UK Times
Friday 19th October 2018
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 20th October 2018
United States Grand Prix Free Practice 3: 13:00-14:00 (UK time: 19:00-20:00)
United States Grand Prix Qualifying: 16:00 (UK time: 22:00)
Sunday 21st October 2018
United States Grand Prix: 13:10 (UK time: 19:10)
Previous Winners
2017 United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Austin
2016 United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
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
Alonso 2017 on board
Depallier Long Beach 1978
Championship Permutations
Hamilton will win the title if...
He is 1st and Vettel is 3rd or lower
He is 2nd and Vettel is 5th or lower
He is 3rd and Vettel is 7th or lower
He is 4th and Vettel is 8th or lower
He is 5th and Vettel is 9th or lower
He is 6th and Vettel fails to score
Facts from the last race
Lewis Hamilton needs only 33 points from the remaining four races to be sure of the 2018 championship title.
To put that into perspective, that’s an average of eight and a quarter points per race, when his average over the last four is a perfect 25. Sebastian Vettel is 67 points behind, which is one point further away than he was after the first 17 races of last season.
Suzuka saw Hamilton take his fourth consecutive victory. If he wins the next race he will tie his personal best streak of five wins in a row.
It was also his fifth Japanese Grand Prix victory, leaving him one shy of Michael Schumacher’s record. As in Russia, Mercedes has been undefeated in Japan in the V6 hybrid turbo era. Nor have they lost in that time at the next venue on the calendar: the Circuit of the Americas.
With his 71st win, Hamilton is now 20 away from reaching Schumacher’s all-time victories record. He’s contracted for two more seasons at Mercedes and has won at least nine races in every season since 2014. It’s therefore likely he could equal Schumacher’s 91 wins around the same time his current Mercedes contract expires…
Mercedes have decisively overturned Ferrari’s performance advantage. They scored their second one-two finish in a row which is something they never managed to do during the whole of last season. Their most recent consecutive one-twos were in the final four races of 2016.
Hamilton led every lap of the race, the first time he has done so this year. However he was denied a ‘grand slam’ of pole, win, leading every lap and fastest lap by Sebastian Vettel, who claimed the 35th fastest lap of his career. His 1’32.318 was 0.778 seconds off the all-time Suzuka race lap record, held by Kimi Raikkonen.
Valtteri Bottas notched up his seventh second-place finish of a season in which he is still yet to win a race – partly due, of course, to Mercedes’ team orders in the Russian Grand Prix. This was his 30th podium appearance, moving him ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.
Force India had both cars in the points again. They’ve done this at every race at the summer break except Singapore, where their two drivers tangled with each other.
Finally, two-times Japanese Grand Prix winner Fernando Alonso finished 14th in car number 14 for the second race in a row. It ensures that in all of his Japanese Grand Prix appearance for McLaren he never finished higher than 11th, which was where he also finished on his first visit to Suzuka with Minardi in 2001.
Drivers’ Chosen Tyres
Championship Standings
