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 truly turned the corner.
That is the second reason why the Austin weekend is so key. It heralds a return to more traditional circuits featuring high-speed direction changes, contrasting with the most recent run of low-downforce tracks Monza and Baku, and a maximum-downforce but low-speed street circuit in Singapore.
Austin will therefore offer a clearer picture of what the form table might look like until the end of the year, with only November's race on the Las Vegas Strip the odd one out that's closer to Baku in nature.
"What we're looking to do is to build on the understanding that we have and take a car there that's well balanced between both of its axles, it inspires the confidence of the driver," Horner said. "It's a very different challenge. There is that first sector [which] is very high speed. They've resurfaced part of the circuit as well, so there's another variable that's thrown in.
"It's a sprint weekend, so you've got to hit the ground running. But the whole team's been working incredibly hard on understanding the issues, addressing them, and getting, hopefully, remedies on the car for Austin."
While all attention has gone to McLaren's battle against Red Bull, Ferrari may yet be in the fight, following just 34 points behind Red Bull in third. But the Scuderia is perhaps the team with the biggest question marks to answer this weekend, as it has struggled with high-speed bouncing on the most demanding circuits since the summer.
Maranello's solutions to that crippling problem have gone unproven on the atypical run of Monza, Baku and Singapore, so Austin will be the litmus test on whether Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have the tools to compete on COTA's demanding configuration.
"We are seeing the numbers that we expected, bringing those new parts on the car, but we still don't have the definitive answer of how close we got to McLaren or Red Bull on a normal track," Leclerc said. "I'm sure we did a step forward. How much? I think we'll see that in Austin."
Sainz remains cautious too until he sees Ferrari's latest specification stretch its legs on "normal tracks", but feels Vegas will be Ferrari's best bet to take another win this year.
"I think every team has one more upgrade more or less in the pipeline that they're going to try before the end of the year, so we could still see some swings in performance," the Spaniard said. "At the same time, we've seen upgrades this year don't [always] mean performance. It doesn't always translate into lap time. It's happened to us and other teams, Red Bull, Mercedes, except McLaren.
"What we need to see is if it makes a difference in Austin and Brazil, all the more old-school normal tracks, basically. And then Vegas I think is our next big chance."
