Oscar Piastri survived a major scare during the sole practice session for the United States Grand Prix in which three-time F1 champion Max Verstappen again set the leading time.
Just over the halfway point of the hour-long session at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas, Piastri was on a flying lap when his McLaren caught a kerb on the exit of Turn 8, leaving him out of shape going into the following corner.
At speed, Piastri went off track and onto the dirt. As he fought to regain control of the MCL60, it appeared almost certain he would end up on the losing side and smash into a barrier.
But the Australian, whose recent stunning form has been one of the major talking points of F1 of late, showed remarkable skill to avoid what could have been a major incident.
Piastri managed to continue on a medium-tyre run rather than returning to the garage to allow his team to check for potential floor damage, eventually finishing the session a lowly 19th, 2.508s adrift of Verstappen.
Piastri and 15th quickest team-mate Lando Norris were two of the four drivers who did not run the soft tyres in a qualifying simulation at the end of a session in which COTA’s age-old problem of being bumpy reared its ugly head.
The track has long had issues, primarily as 11 years ago it was built on marshland, leading to occasional minor subsidence.
Following complaints after the 2021 events, both F1 and MotoGP, especially, made severe complaints, leading to a resurfacing in certain key areas in order to appease the track bosses’ two biggest clients.
The drivers will again be tested over the course of the weekend, which Verstappen has again started off on the front foot with a leading time of one minute 35.912s, 0.156s clear of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, with Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes third quickest, 0.281s down.
At the start of the session, it was not long before the yawning chasm that has existed for most of the season between Verstappen and the rest of the field appeared.
On initial hard-tyre runs, Verstappen posted a time of 1:37.687s, with his closest challenger in Hamilton nine-tenths of a second adrift.
The gap was soon extended to over a second as Verstappen shaved off almost two-tenths to post a 1:37.498s, although he did run wide at Turn 19 which, if set in a competitive session, would have been deleted for exceeding track limits.
After 15 minutes, Hamilton at least suggested Verstappen might not have it all his own way again as the Briton’s next flying lap, also on the hard rubber, saw him close to within 0.044s before dipping a tenth of a second below the Dutchman to set the pace on his following push lap.
In between those two laps, there was more bad news for Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll as he was told to box due to a problem with the front-left corner of his car, and not to brake until the last moments.
It soon became apparent the AMR23 had a brake issue as Stroll’s mechanics were forced to strip down the component in order to discover the problem. It resulted in checks also being made on team-mate Alonso’s car.
The issue unfortunately proved terminal for Stroll, leaving him with just five laps to his name going into the latter qualifying session for the grand prix.
At the halfway point, Norris was third quickest, 0.211s adrift, albeit on the medium tyres, as were the two other drivers below him in Yuki Tsunoda in his AlphaTauri, and Haas’ Kevin Magnussen.
That, at least, was a positive for Haas which has unveiled a major upgrade package on its VF-23s, arguably the biggest in the team’s history during the course of a season.
Although all at McLaren suggested pre-event the circuit would not suit their car, given the greater number of slower corners, and the bumps, on a new set of medium Pirellis, Norris set the leading time with 18 minutes remaining of 1:37.256s.
That was comfortably usurped seven minutes later by Williams’ Alex Albon by seven-tenths of a second, although he was the first of the 20 drivers to run on the softs in a qualifying simulation.
When Verstappen appeared on the softs, it was no surprise he blitzed Albon’s time by 0.623s, only for Hamilton to again suggest Mercedes, with a new floor on its W14s, are in the fight this weekend.
Hamilton posted the leading time in the first two sectors, only to be held up in the final sector by traffic, leaving him almost three-tenths of a second down, with Leclerc also marginally ahead of the seven-time F1 champion.
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, desperately in need of a good weekend, was fourth quickest, followed superbly by Magnussen, whose team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was ninth.
Sandwiched in between the duo were George Russell in his Mercedes, Albon and the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly rounded out the top 10 in his Alpine, the only other driver to finish within a second of Verstappen.
On his return from a five-race lay-off after breaking a metacarpal in his left hand during a crash in practice for the Dutch GP at the end of August, Daniel Ricciardo impressively finished just 0.048s behind team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, the duo 13th and 14th on the timesheet.
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