Either Red Bull driver could have been on pole position for Formula 1’s United States Grand Prix were they not thwarted by Kimi Antonelli turning the tables through a crucial sequence of corners.
An intense qualifying fight came down to Antonelli versus Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar in Q3, and especially their opening runs - on which the Mercedes and the Red Bull traded dominance across the lap.
Sunday is Antonelli’s first chance to wrap up the world championship. It’s a mathematical long shot but he is in the best place to do it after a qualifying lap worthy of the cause.
Mercedes’ supremacy in the sweeps
Antonelli was superb through the latter part of the sweeps in the opening sector. The deeper into that sequence, the more assured he looked, throwing the car into each part with precise aggression even as the engine cried loudly with Antonelli holding it in a lower gear versus Verstappen.
Antonelli used it to carry prodigious speed holding the throttle for longer into Turn 7, rolling that through Turn 8 and picking up the throttle more aggressively into Turn 9, gaining almost two tenths through these corners versus the Red Bull.
“Medium-speed corners, high-speed, medium-speed,” Antonelli said of where the lap was sweetest.
“It felt in a good place, the car. We still struggle a little bit in low speed, but overall the car has been very good in Sector 1 and Sector 2, especially through Turns 8 and 9.
“So that's where we feel the most gain from the package. It's still the low speed that we're trying to understand.”
Where Kimi turned the tables
The lower-speed weakness had been evident until qualifying and manifested especially in the final sector when, at this track, the tyres can be screaming.
Mercedes made “reasonably large changes overnight”, according to trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, and while it was an improvement he said it was “still struggling through the final sector though, with almost all our deficit to our competitors coming through the sequence from Turns 12 to 15”.
In FP2, Verstappen was a tenth faster than Antonelli from the exit of Turn 12 to Turn 15. In FP3 this was two tenths and even in Q1 and Q2 there was half a tenth or so in the Red Bull’s favour.
But Antonelli managed this section very well on what would ultimately prove to be his pole lap in Q3.
He kept the tyres alive better than the Red Bulls, putting two tenths on Verstappen on this sequence and three tenths on Hadjar – the Mercedes especially strong picking up the throttle off of the slow Turns 13 and 15.
It was a critical part of Antonelli being faster in the final sector even with a slower run off the final corner costing around a tenth.
Hadjar quicker than Verstappen?
Verstappen was frustrated, and confused, that Red Bull’s very strong pace on a used set of softs in Q2 did not translate into a better feeling on new tyres in Q3.
He, like many others, failed to improve on his second run. But the first “just felt bad” anyway. He complained that without the necessary grip “I couldn't lean on the rear the way I wanted in the final sector” - where Antonelli was able to make a difference.
But Verstappen was also slightly weaker in the middle sector than he could have been, given Hadjar was almost a tenth faster here – and Verstappen’s Q3 disappointment almost opened the door to Hadjar beating him.
Hadjar arguably should have, given his ideal lap from combining his best sectors was marginally faster than Verstappen’s equivalent.
A composite Red Bull lap – combining Verstappen’s first and third sectors, and Hadjar’s middle – would have been 0.041s slower than Antonelli, further indicative of the fine margins that decided this fight.
Antonelli versus Red Bull
Sector one
Antonelli: 25.310s
Red Bull: 25.245s (Verstappen, deleted)
Red Bull 0.065s quicker
Sector two
Antonelli: 37.297s
Red Bull: 37.346s (Hadjar, deleted)
Antonelli 0.049s quicker
Sector three
Antonelli: 31.428s
Red Bull: 31.485s (Verstappen)
Antonelli 0.057s quicker
Total
Antonelli: 1m34.035s
Red Bull: 1m34.076s
Antonelli 0.041s quicker
It was impressive that Hadjar was even in the mix at all after what he called “a disaster of a weekend” until qualifying.
“I knew there was something in the car because there were times where I could do half a lap and I felt comfortable, but I could never finish it,” he said.
“But in that qualifying, the car really came alive a bit more for me. We really dug deep on the set-up. We tried so many things this weekend, and it really paid off.
“So, on that note, it's really, really satisfying. But I'm a bit gutted, more about the first attempt in Q3.”
That ultimately went for everybody except Antonelli.