Everything is bigger in Texas… except, it transpires, the racing garages. The pit-building at the Circuit of the Americas is what real estate agents would call ‘cosy’.

Not the easiest place to work in but capable, on Sunday afternoon, of creating a supercharged atmosphere. The tension was palpable for crew, engineers and guests as Lando began a late-race charge that took him from P15 to P6 over the final 20 laps of the 56-lap US Grand Prix.

The straightforward facts of the race show that Lando both started and finished P6 – but there was a lot of racing between lights and flag, and a strategy that left Lando with a lot of work do in the final third of the race – with a car rather battered after driving through the debris field of the Alonso-Stroll collision.

The team was content to put him in that position, given COTA offers genuine overtaking opportunities at the end of both the front and back straights… though at first it wasn’t entirely clear what shape the car was in.

“There was some damage to the front left fender – but it was really hard to know what impact that has on lap times,” says Randy Singh, Director of Strategy and Sporting. “We can measure the impact on the aerodynamics but translating that to lap times is more complex. Lando’s pace looked decent – and it’s hard to say how much better it would have been with the car fully intact.”

Lando made his second and final pit-stop on Lap 34, swapping to a second set of Hard tyres. He pitted from P7 and re-emerged in P15, and moved immediately up to P14 the following lap when Daniel pitted. Pre-race, the two-stop strategy was heavily favoured at COTA, with every driver retaining at least three sets of the harder compounds – but eight laps behind the Safety Car, and the impact of closing the field up, brought the one-stop race back into marginal contention.

“It meant the post-Safety Car decisions were a bit different,” says Randy. “I think there was more consideration for not stopping again. Without the Safety Car closing the pack up, it was a clear two-stop for everyone – but that Safety Car changed the consideration and made our decision to stop again trickier – but I wouldn’t say it moved us away from what we had originally planned.”

Emerging from the pits, Lando caught and passed Nicholas Latifi on lap 37, then passed Yuki Tsunoda on lap 42 which, in combination with a slow stop for Sebastian Vettel, lifted him to P11. The top five cars at that point were out of sight but the five cars in between Lando and P6 were all legitimate targets, and thanks to the compression of the field behind the Safety Car, were all within range. Kevin Magnussen in P6 was nine seconds ahead of Lando with Fernando  Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon and Zhou Guanyu evenly spaced between.

The tyre situation was more interesting. Magnussen was running a long stint on a Medium tyre, having pitted under the Safety Car. Alonso had been forced onto a long final stint on a Hard, by virtue of having to pit under that Safety Car for a new nose box. Albon and Zhou had elected to do the same. Ocon needed to stop again, having run two Hard tyres. Race engineer Will Joseph’s instructions to Lando were uncomplicated: “let’s go get them all.“

While COTA is used for an eclectic array of motorsports, hosting everything from MotoGP to NASCAR, it was designed specifically with the US Grand Prix in mind, and nowhere is that more obvious than at Turn One. The uphill approach – much, much steeper than it appears on TV – makes the corner blind, while the width of the track at that point allows for a variety of overtaking lines.

Lando demonstrated the most orthodox pair, passing Zhou up the inside on lap 43 and then Albon around the outside on 44. This left him with the Alpine pair of Ocon and Alonso ahead. By virtue of having run two sets of Hard tyres for his opening stint, Ocon was required to pit again for a Medium.

The obvious strategy for Alpine was to leave him out to defend against Lando, allowing Alonso to draw ahead and gain some breathing space. Lando’s strategists were aware of the danger, and Lando made his move on the following lap, passing at the end of back straight to move up into P8. Ocon pitted immediately, and Lando had a four-seconds deficit to Alonso.

Alonso, however, overtook Magnussen, struggling on his very worn Mediums. Lando did likewise, passing the Dane on lap 49, now two seconds behind Alonso with six laps remaining. Lando closed the gap and was within DRS range by lap 52 – but Fernando doesn’t give places away lightly. After a robust defence, Lando finally squeaked through on the penultimate lap, to the garage’s biggest cheer of the day.

“When we chose to add a stop, we thought we'd get back to where we were: we thought it was a safer thing to do,” summarises Randy. “We expected to make progress, but it turned out to be a bit harder than we were expecting, and we only passed Fernando towards the very end.

"It was really about Fernando because the other cars we expected to pass, we passed relatively straightforwardly. We wouldn’t have added the stop had we not expected to make it all the way back through because we knew some of those cars would stay out until the end – though to be honest, we did not expect that of Magnussen.”

“Coming back through, it was a lot of fun,” said Lando in the post-race TV pen, with a huge grin. “Especially the pressure of having the chance to get past Fernando with only a few laps to go. I knew I had to time everything perfectly.

"It was very tough – he’s a difficult competitor and the last guy I would want to be up against in the final few laps – but he makes it fun. I have respect and a lot of trust in him that we could have a good race and fight closely.”

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