What are the tactical options for the United States Grand Prix?

Saturday was a red-letter day for Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen with a Sprint victory and a seemingly-comfortable three-tenths advantage in Qualifying.

Looking at the raw numbers, the Dutchman, with his shadow increasingly looming over the Drivers’ Championship, looks a good bet to add a fourth US Grand Prix victory on Sunday afternoon… but is everything quite as it seems?

Max has been playing down his chances, pointing to McLaren’s strong long-run pace and the high temperatures expected to suit his rivals in Papaya. We’ve had hot track temperatures before at the Circuit of the Americas, but nothing quite this hot, and that’s going to play a part, as is Pirelli’s decision to introduce a compound bridge this year between the hard and medium tyres.

The indications are that all three tyres are in play. It’s going to be a fast race, it’s going to be a dramatic race… but above all, it’s going to be a strategic race.

What Happened Last Year?

The one-stop was big in Texas last year, with 15 cars running either medium>hard or hard>medium. The former was the preferred approach with the top five, and seven of the top 10, all going that way.

The pit window was wide: the top three of Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Verstappen stopped on Laps 26, 21, 25 respectively; behind them the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri went longer, to Laps 31 and 32.

Behind them, George Russell in P6 was the first of the hard>medium runners home. He went to Lap 40 before making his pit-stop. Liam Lawson, P9, and Franco Colapinto, P10, were the other points-scoring hard starters, and both made ground with their approach, having started P19 and P15 respectively.

Kevin Magnussen was the first two-stopper home in P11. The Dane ran medium>hard>medium with stops on Laps 17 and 38. Pre-race, this had looked like it might be a more popular choice – but an early-race Safety Car tipped the balance in favour of the one-stop. The only driver to fit a soft tyre all afternoon was Esteban Ocon, who took it on for the final four laps of the race.

What’s the fastest strategy this time?

The Machiavellian cunning of the compound bridge in the tyre allocation is that it introduced a genuine dilemma. The C1 hard tyre will be durable… but slow. A medium>hard one-stop race will allow a driver to push, while a medium>soft race would require very careful management.

Conversely, any two-stop derivative on the medium and soft tyres will be rapid – but will it be rapid enough to overcome the time lost to an extra pitstop and subsequently fighting back through traffic?

The surprise on Friday was a relatively spritely hard tyre compared to the pre-race modelling.

“Obviously there is a big delta between the C1 and the C3-C4,” says Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra, “…but from our simulations, we expected the gap to be a couple of seconds, whereas [in FP1] what we saw was around 1.4s, which is, let’s say, a much better picture to what we expected.”

Indeed, the medium>hard race is the borderline best case. It has an optimum pit window between laps 20-26. Getting into that optimum window might be tricky, however.

The undercut will be powerful, and if the field breaks up and gaps appear, there will be a temptation to go early, potentially triggering a cascade heading up the order.

How about another option for the top 10?

There are several different versions of two-stop available using the soft and medium compounds. The best premeditated versions start with a soft tyre stint, with soft>medium>medium having optimal windows between Laps 12-18 and 32-38, and soft>medium>soft moving the second stop to Laps 36-42.

These get to utilise the extra grip off the line, but also providing a bailout option should there be an early safety car, allowing the rest of the race to be completed with two mediums.

What about the back half of the grid?

The usual reverse strategy with a hard tyre start followed by a medium finish worked well last year… but doesn’t look so appetising in 2025 with the C1 replacing the C2.

Anyone using the hard tyre at the start is liable to go backwards, and it’s not going to be very flexible should there be a Safety Car in the first 20 laps.

Perhaps more likely is the medium>soft race – though not necessarily just for the back of the grid. It will require very careful management, but anyone going deep on their first stint with the medium may naturally fall into that approach, should the race turn into a game of who can go longest.

It would have a pit window between Laps 28-34… but this leaves a very long stint on the soft tyre.

Wait! What’s the weather doing?

It’s going to be the coolest day of the weekend but temperatures during the race are still likely to hit 30°C with the track temperatures up around 48°C and similar to what we had yesterday.

High track temperatures generally mean high degradation and more tyre management – but that’s going to be tricky with a stiff northeasterly wind blowing.