Mercedes driver George Russell suggested modern Formula 1 has just become \u201ca race to Turn 1\u201d following a drab U.S. Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
What had promised to be an epic race at the Circuit of the Americas turned into one featuring limited overtaking across the field.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen\u2019s victory was the 13th time out of this year\u2019s 19 races the driver starting on pole won the race. Russell had started fifth and ended sixth, having lost a place to McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri at the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now in F1 it\u2019s a race to Turn 1,\u201d Russell told Sky Sports F1. \u201cThere\u2019s no tyre degradation, there\u2019s only three tenths between the quickest car and the slowest car in the top six.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, you need at least half a second to overtake, so if I came out of Turn 1 in P3, I\u2019d have been on the podium today. But instead I came out in P6 and I finished P6.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris provided some overtaking in his fight with Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc, although the fact both were on very different tyre strategies helped that be the case.<\/p>\n
F1 has long struggled to find a solution for great wheel-to-wheel racing. The Drag Reduction System (DRS) is being replaced under next year\u2019s rule change but has previously been likened to a band-aid for deeper problems, largely rooted in how difficult it is for modern F1 cars to follow each other.<\/p>\n
Long-time F1 tyre supplier Pirelli has often shouldered a lot of blame for the state of its tyres but Russell explained that it\u2019s unfair to simply focus on that area.<\/p>\n
\u201cPirelli get a hard time, no matter what,\u201d Russell said. \u201c[When] there\u2019s lots of tyre degradation, people say it\u2019s not real, the drivers can\u2019t push when we have to manage … [then] we don\u2019t like that when there\u2019s no tyre degradation, we say it\u2019s a boring race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t seem to be able to win in any case, so realistically you want a tyre that you can push full gas, but it doesn\u2019t go the whole race If you could choose the tyre, it\u2019s a tyre you can go flat out, but after 15 laps it falls off a cliff and you have to do a two or three-stop race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally, the soft tyre does 12 laps, the medium tyre does 15 laps and the hard tyre does 20 laps and then it falls off the cliff. But that is a lot easier said than done.<\/p>\n
\u201cPirelli get a very hard time, they do their best, they have given us a substantially better tyre, like this tyre is very good, but it causes bad racing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes driver George Russell suggested modern Formula 1 has just become \u201ca race to Turn 1\u201d following a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2571,49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-227478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-auto-racing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}