Formula 1 News: Verstappen Wins 2024 USGP Sprint Race

Max Verstappen continued his dominance at the Circuit of Americas by leading the 2024 USGP Sprint race from lights-to-flag.

—by Mark Cipolloni—

Verstappen beat the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz Jr. by over 3 seconds.  It was an important win for Verstappen and Red Bull who have struggled as of late with the diabolical RB20.

Verstappen has won the last three USGP races and hopes to add a 4th consecutive win on Sunday to go with today’s Sprint win.

Sainz passed McLaren’s Lando Norris on the penultimate lap for 2nd and in turn took an all important point away from Norris in his battle with Verstappen for the Driver’s Champion.

The Dutchman now leads Norris by 54 points.

Norris held off the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc who was 4th while George Russell held off his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton for 5th.

Norris held onto third by the skin of his teeth, nearly coming to blows with Leclerc at Turn 15 on the final lap as the Ferrari driver was surprised by his early braking into the tight left-hander. The incident was placed under investigation by the stewards as potential erratic driving.

Kevin Magnussen clinched seventh as his Haas team-mate Nico Hulkenberg claimed the final point; Magnussen defied an order to let Yuki Tsunoda repass earlier in the race as he felt the RB driver had pushed him off in an attempt to pass.

“It was not too bad, feels a bit like old times!” said Verstappen, who’s now won 11 of the 16 Sprints held.

“I’m very happy with today. I think of course if you look at the whole race, Ferrari was also very quick, but I think for us finally we were racing again.

“Normally in the race we’re always looking back behind us, but now we could just do our own race and we had good pace.”

Norris made a good start from his 4th starting position, surging forward from P4 to go side-by-side with the Ferraris before squeezing through into P2. Russell, meanwhile, soon found himself under pressure from a feisty Leclerc, but the Silver Arrows car managed to hold position.

Initially it was Leclerc who was in pursuit of Russell but after a close battle, he lost out to teammate Sainz who got past in Turn 15 on lap five.

Sainz was a man on a mission, the Ferrari storming past Russell to move up to third behind Verstappen and Norris ahead. This left the Mercedes to try to hold off the other Scuderia car of Leclerc – but by Lap 10 the latter had made the overtake, pushing Russell down to fifth.

Norris made another mental error and locked up with 1.5 laps to go, which allowed Sainz through into second place as the crowd cheered, while Leclerc was now pressuring the McLaren. There were no such concerns for Verstappen, however, who took the victory by more than three seconds from Sainz.

Following the Sprint, the drivers will take a brief pause before qualifying for the Grand Prix takes place later at 6:00pm eastern time.

2024 USGP Sprint Race Results – 19 laps