The factors that make the US GP weekend crucial to F1’s fight at the front

After four weeks away, Formula 1 returns for a frantic six-race run in eight weeks, with the United States Grand Prix a crucial weekend across the grid as 2024’s final upgrades emerge.

The race at the Circuit of the Americas is largely seen as the last major opportunity to unleash a batch of car upgrades this season. Austin is the start of a triple-header that includes Mexico and Brazil, making it logistically the easiest place to introduce new parts.

Then follows another triple-header of Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to close off a hectic season. Some teams might bring new low-downforce items to outlier Vegas, although it is expected teams will generally re-use their wing specifications from Monza and especially Baku. And by Qatar it will have been too late to get a big return on investment unless teams choose to trial parts for 2025.

So, whatever teams have had in the production pipeline over the last month will now start to emerge as they make one final push to improve their fortunes. Austin is a sprint weekend, giving teams less practice time to dial updates in, but they have become accustomed to the format so their reluctance to bring upgrades to a sprint event is not as big as it used to be.

“We all know that we already started the development of next year’s car and we try to do our best to have small upgrades,” said Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur. “I think it will be probably the last one for everybody; it will be true for us, but it will be true for the other teams. And now it’s so tight over the last four, five, six races, if you have a look on the grid, it may get tight and every single bit can make a difference.”

“It’s a natural point in the year that all teams will bring something to Austin,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner added. “Ferrari has got something sizable. I think Mercedes, McLaren, they’ll all be bringing something.”

At the front, McLaren leads by 41 points and looks primed to keep its advantage until the end of the year, based on its performance gap with Red Bull in recent races. But Red Bull has offered glimpses that it has finally understood where it has gone wrong with the development of its RB20.

Yes, Max Verstappen finished a massive 21 seconds behind McLaren’s Lando Norris in Singapore but was still a clear second at Red Bull’s worst circuit. COTA’s flowing layout might offer a better picture of whether Red Bull has…