The magnificent Circuit of the Americas usually provides excellent and exciting racing. That phenomenal run up to the blind corner of turn one causes problems especially at the start.

Esteban Ocon in his sartorial elegance.

A Rome, faites comme les Romains (When in Rome, do as the Romans do)
Rome? Perhaps Texas.

Esteban Ocon (Haas) will be hoping that the updates that his team has brought to this race will prove to be beneficial. Haas have brought a bunch of updates for their cars. They are the only team to do so besides Mercedes who have a small update.

Haas update-

The Mercedes update-

While most constructors have not brought updates to the weekend, some have brought special liveries.

Williams, Racing Bulls, McLaren, Haas, Alpine, and Aston Martin have each unveiled special liveries that will feature on their cars during the 2025 United States Grand Prix.

Williams will showcase their 2002 livery in honour of title partner Atlassian’s founding year, with Juan Pablo Montoya unveiling the design in Austin.

Racing Bulls introduced a tortoiseshell-themed kit for this weekend, unveiled with singer Shaboozey and worn by Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson.

Aston Martin’s AMR25 features its first custom livery, decorated with mathematical formulas to honour Formula 1’s “invisible science.”

Alpine have placed a yellow stripe on the engine cover and rear wing of their car. This design will be present on the A525 during the upcoming races in Austin, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo.

McLaren, the 2025 Constructors’ Champions, introduced an “iridescent livery enhancement” that will be applied to their car in Mexico as well.

The American team Haas selected a ‘Stars and Stripes’ design for Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman’s VF-25 cars.

Tyres

Pirelli provided a non-consecutive hardness range of tyres for the weekend. The C1 was selected for the hard white marked tyre, the C3 for the medium yellow marked tyre and C4 for the soft red marked tyre. Last year it was the C2, C3 and C4.

After the sprint race Pirelli obviously saw a problem with the tyres and issued a revised preview via the race director. The first issue, A, of the preview was issued on Wednesday at 14:02. The second issue, B, was issued on Friday evening at 20:07. The change was to apply a pressure increase of 1psi to all tyres. For instance, the front slick tyres increased from 24 to 25psi and the rear slicks from 22 to 23psi.

Free Practice

With only one hour of practice before sprint qualifying most running was done to get the feel of the circuit for the drivers. It was hot with the ambient temperature at 31C (88F) and track temperature at 44C (111.2F). Most of the sessions running was on the hard compound tyres.

Only Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll from Aston Martin started on the medium tyre to scrub them, which is putting the tyres through a one-lap heat cycle. This process is intended to help the tyres reach optimal temperature more quickly when used later in the race. While other teams occasionally use this scrubbing technique, Aston Martin applies it on a regular basis.

After around twenty minutes into the practice Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) ran very wide over a sausage kerb and shed carbon fibre on the circuit. The session was stopped by a red flag so the debris could be cleared. After a few minutes the session was resumed.

Both Carlos Sainz (Williams) and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) had mechanical issues with their cars which curtailed running. Carlos only managed nine laps and Charles eighteen.

Towards the end of practice on a mixture of soft and medium tyres most cars did a qualifying simulation and the times were-

Last year’s sprint qualifying time was 1m 32.833s and race qualifying time was 1m 32.330s.

Note Nico Hulkenberg’s (Kick Sauber) second place. Where did that come from?

That was the preparation for the United States Sprint and Grand Prix qualifying sessions and races.