{"id":217280,"date":"2025-10-22T06:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T06:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/217280\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T06:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T06:57:10","slug":"hamilton-bemused-by-pace-decline-at-the-end-of-f1-us-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/217280\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton bemused by pace decline at the end of F1 US GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> had a rather uneventful race at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix until the final lap, when an unidentified problem cost him four seconds and put him under threat from Oscar Piastri<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After getting a good start that allowed him to move ahead of George Russell<\/a> while keeping Piastri at bay on the outside of Turn 1, Hamilton spent some time as a privileged spectator to the battle between his team-mate Charles Leclerc<\/a> and Lando Norris<\/a> for second.<\/p>\n

However, as the race strategies unfolded, the seven-time world champion fell back into a kind of no man’s land, positioned between that duo ahead and Piastri behind.<\/p>\n

At the start of the final lap, Hamilton was nine seconds behind his team-mate and five seconds ahead of the McLaren driver. Then, suddenly, the Ferrari<\/a> man began losing pace, tenths of a second at a time as the corners went by – until the gap to Piastri dropped below two seconds. Finally, just as the McLaren<\/a> had the Ferrari within striking distance, Hamilton crossed the finish line with only a 1.1-second advantage.
\u00a0
When asked whether he had suffered a puncture, Hamilton replied: “I don’t really know. I was in Turn 5, and it felt like I hit something. All of a sudden, I had massive understeer, and I thought it was a puncture.<\/p>\n

“I braked at Turn 11, and the car just wouldn’t stop. I thought, \u2018Damn, what’s going on?’ In the end, I managed to hold on through the final corners, but I had massive understeer. I thought the front wing was broken or that something had happened to a tyre. It was really close with Piastri.”<\/p>\n

\"Lewis <\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton in parc ferme after the US Grand Prix<\/p>\n

Photo by: Zak Mauger \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Beyond this incident, which ultimately had no real consequences, the United States Grand Prix weekend was perhaps one of Hamilton’s most complete of the season.<\/p>\n

He equalled his best grand prix result of the year on Sunday, despite still lacking the pace to genuinely fight for the podium, whether in the sprint or on race day.<\/p>\n

“There’s clearly a positive trend moving in the right direction,” he added. “I feel much more comfortable in the car.<\/p>\n

“I’m definitely going to take a serious look at all of this over the next few days to try to understand how we can get more out of the car and put it in a slightly better position.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Stuart Codling<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton had a rather uneventful race at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix until the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[70286,1687,831,372,6537,93160,832,101,56,54,70285,55],"class_list":["post-217280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-hamilton-bemused-by-pace-decline-at-the-end-of-f1-us-gp","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states-gp","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}