F1 heads to the USA! Your guide to the 2022 USGP
The Formula One championship may be won, but the racing will continue as the sport makes its way to the USA for the second time in 2022. Austin and the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) will host its 10th U.S. Grand Prix with the nation amid a love affair with F1. Miami might’ve held Formula One’s first U.S. racing this year, but the Texan capital city has become the home of F1 in America.
With COTA borrowing popular sections of other tracks, such as Silverstone’s Maggotts & Becketts and Istanbul Park’s Turn 8, the resulting layout becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The drivers enjoy the circuit, record numbers of fans flock there, and there’s that extra ‘over-the-topness’ that only the USA can pull off without feeling embarrassed. Put it all together, and the 2022 U.S. Grand Prix doesn’t need to have a title fight to provide entertainment.
What to watch out for in the 2022 U.S. Grand Prix
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the talking point that will get the most column inches isn’t going to be on track. After the FIA’s findings that Red Bull had a ‘minor overspend’ breach of the cost cap, there haven’t been any media obligations from the guilty party. However, that changes this weekend when the focus will be on establishing what happens next and how the other teams have reacted.
The tone coming from the paddock will be fun to watch as it evolves. Red Bull are almost certain to take their first Constructors’ Championship since 2013, and the first in the turbo-hybrid era. However, this isn’t like Max Verstappen’s Drivers’ Championship win in Suzuka when the cost cap controversy wasn’t confirmed. Instead, any championship won will be with the team’s full knowledge that they’ve broken the rules and an unspecified penalty hanging over them.
Elsewhere, Free Practice 1 isn’t ordinarily a must-watch occasion for fans, but there’ll be a host of different names on the track this Friday. Each team must field a rookie at least twice over the season, and it seems COTA is a popular location for that obligation. So F2’s Felipe Drugovich, Logan Sargeant, and Theo Pourchaire will drive in FP1 along with F2’s 2021 vice-champion Robert Shwartzman, IndyCar’s Álex Palou, and Haas’s reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi.
2022 U.S. Grand Prix Pirelli Tyre Choices
It’s the middle set of tyres for the teams at COTA, with Pirelli bringing the C2, C3, and C4 tyre compounds. Last year’s U.S. Grand Prix became a two-stopper, and the 2022 rubber seems to wear quicker than the previous compound, so pit stops and tyre strategy will be vital.
Pirelli will also run a blind tyre test with the teams in FP2, as they had planned to do in Japan last time. Unfortunately, the Suzuka rain prevented that from happening, but the sun is forecast to shine throughout the U.S. Grand Prix weekend, so the test with Pirelli’s 2023 prototypes will likely go ahead.
Who could win the 2022 U.S. Grand Prix
Max Verstappen showed that his Singapore performance was a blip with his commanding lead in Japan when he won by almost half a minute in a half-distance race. Unless misfortune or errors befall the Dutch driver, there’s no question Verstappen will be the likely winner of the 2022 U.S. Grand Prix.
However, it is the first time in history that Verstappen will race in a single-seater with the year’s championship already won. He might throw caution to the wind too much and suffer an uncharacteristic crash or mistake. If so, there’s no telling which rival is the best of the rest to pick up the pieces. Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez are locked in a vice-champion fight that might rumble on until the season finale, and Carlos Sainz has always done well at COTA since his Toro Rosso days.
And yet, the most successful driver around the 5.513km track is Lewis Hamilton — by a long margin. Hamilton has five COTA wins to his name, while no other racer has won more than once. In addition, the Brit has an affinity with the celebrity side of the U.S., which has helped him win the crowd to his side. It might be a long shot, given Mercedes’ season so far, but aside from Silverstone, this is the track you’d fancy Hamilton to excel at.
Originally published at Tyres Northampton.
