Ferrari brought its latest big upgrade to the United States Grand Prix, and Charles Leclerc topped both Friday practice sessions.
But while it was a comprehensive performance from Leclerc, it wasn’t a dominant one.
Both sessions were topped by less than 0.1s. In FP2 title leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli was just 0.042s off the pace.
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The ways these two cars are generating performance, though, are drastically different.
The Ferrari is unbeatable in the final sector, from turn 13 to the finish line. This part of the track is technical and dominated by slow corners.
The Mercedes, unsurprisingly, is quickest in the middle sector, which is dominated by the long back straight, where Antonelli gains more than 0.3s on Leclerc.
The difference-maker is the first sector, where it’s close but where the sharp first turn and esses play to Ferrari’s strengths.
The result are two cars that are very evenly matched despite being polar opposites in performance terms.
“The feeling is quite good, but we need to be careful,” Leclerc said.
“Obviously it’s only Friday, and we are seeing what we expected, but again, it’s definitely not what everybody thinks in terms of upgrade and lap time gained.
“But it’s been a good day. I think the balance of the car was good, and straight away we started in a good window, and that paid off.
“Obviously all the hard work that has been done to bring this upgrade as soon as possible is helping us a little bit.”
The challenge for Ferrari will be to keep its nose ahead of Mercedes, which had a more difficult day.
Both Antonelli and George Russell are using the upgraded aero pack this weekend, which the team said after Singapore has a narrower set-up window — and both cars started well outside that window in FP1.
Things were better by FP2, but Antonelli hinted that there was more to come if the team could hone further overnight.
“We’re still trying to find how to put the car in the right window, but definitely we’ve been doing a step forward, and we’ll see what we can do to improve even more,” he said.
At the end of FP2, only one other driver got within half a second of the leaders, and that was, unsurprisingly, Max Verstappen.
Again the Red Bull Racing car was quicker than the Mercedes — and obviously the Ferrari — down the straights, though it seemed to sacrifice some slow-corner performance to put the car in that position.
But despite the massive gap back to the other cars — including Russell in the other Mercedes — the picture is not as clear-cut as it would appear.
“We shouldn’t carry too high expectations into tomorrow, because I feel like the others have more potential to unlock for sure,” Leclerc said.
“Kimi and Max seem to be very, very strong. The McLaren I don’t really know yet — I don’t think they’ve put everything together yet.”
The fact neither McLaren could get into the mix illustrates what could become a major storyline for the weekend.
McLAREN DEMONSTRATES KEY CHALLENGE
The Circuit of the Americas layout is a modern classic, but the bumpy track surface and low-grip conditions in the baking sun make it extremely challenging to drive — or, more to the point, to keep a car on the track.
Verstappen said ahead of the weekend that the bumps were so severe in places that they were a spine damage risk. Gabriel Bortoleto said after practice that the track isn’t up to F1 standard. Lando Norris suggested that it wouldn’t be homologated as a new track today because it’s way beyond FIA tolerances.
But this is a long-running story for this track, and the teams and drivers just have to get on with it.
It’s easier said than done.
Underlining how tough this surface has become, 179 laps were deleted on Friday due to track limits.
Not all of them were competitive times — some were drivers getting out of the way of others — but several frontrunners had fast times deleted in both sessions because they drove over the circuit boundary.
Both McLaren drivers were caught out, leaving them more than a second off the pace without truly representative times.
Oscar Piastri was eighth but had his fastest lap deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 20, the last corner. It was 0.358s fast than his next-best time, so it would have put him fifth, ahead of Russell.
Norris was unable to get in a representative lap on softs at all, with his best time, good enough for seventh, set on his opening set of hards.
He had been on a quick lap before locking his rear axle on the bumps at turn 15. He had been around 0.15s quicker than Piastri just before leaving the circuit, having gained more than 0.3s down the back straight.
If we say, conservatively, that he would have locked in the 0.15s gain, he would have been fourth, ahead of Hamilton — though he would have still been 0.588s slower than Leclerc.
Both Russell and Verstappen had competitive laps deleted across FP1 and FP2 as well, among several other drivers.
“It’s just impossible to put a lap together,” Norris said. “There are signs of good pace, but to go into qualifying now and be able to repeat that every lap and do it on demand is just too difficult.
“I’m sure it’s the same for everyone, honestly, so I think we just need to make some small tweaks to the car.”
McLaren’s tricky car is also playing a role. Both drivers have talked in recent rounds of how much the MCL40 is on a knife edge, needing to be pushed at 100 per cent constantly to get any speed out of it.
“It’s not like there’s anything crazy; it’s just it’s tough, and maybe our car handling is just a little bit on the difficult-to-achieve side,” Norris continued.
“Maybe some small things in a few directions can help us out, but the pace is there or thereabouts. We can still be optimistic.”
The team thinks it can be in the mix for pole if it can extract some consistency from its car. It would be a mighty leap, but given the other three frontrunning teams are so close and McLaren has rarely been that far adrift, you couldn’t rule it out.
We could be looking at a four-team battle for pole and victory, and given this circuit usually produces great racing, we could be in for quite the spectacle.
Piastri puts the moves on Hamilton late | 00:59
CADILLAC HINTS AT DRIVER CHANGE
Away from the track, the driver market has taken a late and potentially explosive turn.
Since Haas confirmed it would sack Esteban Ocon and, later, would replace him with Rafael Câmara for 2027, next year’s field seemed almost complete.
Only Racing Bulls hasn’t yet committed to its line-up, but both Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad are tipped for retention, with an announcement expected soon.
It would appear to leave Ocon locked out, but the Frenchman has insisted that he’s working on keeping a seat on the 2027 grid.
“Don’t say that,” he told reporters when it was suggested this would be his final United States Grand Prix, per the F1 website.
I’ve won everything, in every category I’ve done in go-karts, in Formula Renault, in F3, in GP3, in F1.
“In all these categories I’ve won races, so just thinking of a sports perspective, I deserve to be in F1, and I believe that this is not my last year.”
Now Cadillac has emerged as a possible refuge.
The American-owned team announced both drivers for 2026 last year but subsequently gave the impression that both were on two-year deals — or “multi-year” in F1 parlance.
Cadillac is now giving the impression that, actually, nothing is confirmed for next season.
Asked bluntly on Friday whether Pérez and Valtteri Bottas had contracts for next year, team principal Marcin Budkowski refused to confirm.
“This is the last place I would comment on driver contracts, and in general, I think it’s not something that is done in the press,” he said.
“It’s something which will be done by official releases from the team when the time is right.”
Racer has reported that Pérez has already held talks about a new deal, and the Mexican is viewed as the safer bet, having had a better season than Bottas.
Bottas, however, is seen as vulnerable.
It’s worth remembering that Budkowski is not the team principal who signed Pérez and Bottas, having replaced Graeme Lowdon at the midseason break.
Budkowski has also already worked with Ocon when the Frenchman was at Alpine, and reports suggest he rates the one-time race winner.
But Racer reports that team owner Dan Towriss remains keen to get IndyCar convert Colton Herta into F1 at some stage despite the American’s underwhelming rookie F2 season.
Herta took part in FP1 for Cadillac and reiterated to Racer that his goal was to get to F1 “as soon as possible”.
“I hope in the next few weeks to kind of figure it out and understand what the plan looks like for next year and see if it’s concrete,” he said. “But we’ve got a lot to figure out until then.”
Herta’s route has been blocked by him not having a super licence, but the American is only one point short, which he could get by participating in one more FP1 session, which would make him a live option.
The silly season, in its final moments, could have one more twist in store.