The 2022 United States Grand Prix From Six Different Perspectives

After back-to-back wet races in Singapore and Japan, the weather in Austin, Texas, for the US Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) could not have been better. This made for an exceptional race that saw tight battles for every points position starting with the top three. Of course, it wouldn’t be a 2022 F1 race without some measure of controversy from the FIA. But this certainly wasn’t the headline coming out of the race weekend.

With a record 440,000 fans in attendance throughout the event, it was the most-attended race of the season and the most in F1 history. It likely exceeded the 126,000 fans in attendance for race day at Silverstone this year. I had the fortune to experience our home Grand Prix from the Paddock Club, the Paddock itself, the Alfa Romeo garage, Austin’s famed 6th Street bar scene and the Fairmont Austin hotel throughout the weekend. It was a lot to take in and process…but I’ll do my best.

1. F1 + Cycling

The formal events of the weekend started on Thursday with a morning road bike ride that was organized by 10-time Grand Prix winner Valtteri Bottas, along with his partners in the FNLD GRVL cycling event scheduled for June of next year in Lahti, Finland. Surprisingly, this was not an invite-only ride. It was promoted publicly, and a few dozen riders turned up. Many were locals, but several participants actually changed their travel plans to (a) fly in a day early and (b) bring their bike to Austin. I knew about the ride well ahead of time, as I pre-rode the FNLD GRVL course with the crew back in August, where I also had the chance to interview both Valtteri and his partner, WorldTour rider Tiffany Cromwell, who’s on the Canyon/SRAM team.

The ride started and ended at The Meteor, which is better known as the Espresso, Champagne and Chain Lube cafe. It was a conversational, 18-mile cruise around downtown Austin. For avid cyclists who are also F1 fans, it was a unique opportunity to meet and ride with Valtteri before the craziness of the weekend really started. And it helped to get word out about his new gravel event, which is certain to be an incredible experience.

2. The F1 Family

Depending on your perspective, the craziness of an F1 race actually starts the Sunday prior. This is when the circus that is Formula One starts to arrive in large numbers. As you’re likely aware, F1 travels from city to city and track to track in a highly coordinated manner. It’s a logistical miracle, wherein every individual working in Formula One plays a critical role in creating the spectacle. Rewind back to Tuesday night, when I first arrived in Austin. Austin’s famed 6th Street bars are just a short walk from the Fairmont hotel, and the vast majority of those partying at bars like the Blind Pig were part of the F1 family i.e. mechanics, strategists, engineers, marketers, handlers, media professionals, etc. In many cases, these are jobs that only 10 or 20 people in the world actually have, as they tend to line up with the number of teams and/or drivers.

Pro tip: If you plan a trip to next year’s Grand Prix in Austin, fly in a couple days early. Head down to 6th Street to party with the people of F1 and buy a few drinks. You’ll come to appreciate the sport from an entirely different POV.

3. The Social Center

As an Official Formula One Paddock Club sponsor, the Fairmont Austin became the de facto social center for the Grand Prix in downtown Austin. A vintage Alpine F1 car was parked in the lobby. It was constantly buzzing with activity. Fans were camped out at strategic times in hopes of grabbing a selfie or autograph from one of the Drive to Survive stars. If a driver wasn’t slipping in or out a side door, they were pretty accommodating of these fan requests. Otherwise, the Fairmont offers a very private and exclusive Fairmont Gold experience—described as a hotel within a hotel—on the top four floors. This features a separate check-in area within the Gold Lounge located on the 35th floor. They serve daily breakfast, snacks and happy hour for those staying in one of its 131 guest rooms. It’s also a quiet place to work throughout the day, complete with incredible 360-degree views of downtown Austin.

The Fairmont delivered on an integrated entertainment experience in the form of back-to-back concerts with The Chainsmokers and Marshmello on Friday and Saturday nights, respectively. The shows were promoted by LA-based Capture Studios, which transformed one of the Fairmont’s huge 5th-level ballrooms into a nightclub with various tiers of private tables and bottle service. Keep in mind this is a room where you’d otherwise hold a very large wedding reception, complete with padded carpeting and quite a bit of beige. It did make for a plush dancing surface, and the DJs did not hold back. Despite being a pretty intimate audience, the performances were on the level of a Vegas show in terms of their energy and passion. The headliners came on around 12:00am and wrapped right at 2:00am, which was ideal in getting enough rest for the racing action on the days that followed.

Finally, the Fairmont offers some of the best dining options in Austin. On my first visit to the lobby bar on Wednesday, I spotted Williams principle Jost Capito having drinks with some colleagues. The property’s signature fine-dining restaurant, Garrison, offered a special tasting menu for the weekend that featured eight courses including dry aged duck, red snapper, grilled ribeye cap and “Nereano” spaghetti pasta. This was a collaboration from Garrison’s Executive Chef Jakub Czyszczon with Chef Alfonso Caputo of Taverna del Capitano, a Michelin-star restaurant on the Amalfi coast. On Sunday after the race, I had dinner at Revue, where I also spotted Charles Leclerc and his girlfriend grabbing a bite before flying out to Mexico. Revue offers a unique mix of Asian and Italian dishes for dinner, as well as an excellent breakfast/brunch menu.

4. The Alfa Romeo Garage

There was a fair bit of anticipation heading into Friday’s practice sessions. Everyone knew the Red Bulls would be fast, but teams like Mercedes and Alfa Romeo had brought upgrades to their cars since Japan. Our collective memory of how teams performed in dry conditions was fading after Asia, and there was high hopes Ferrari would redeem itself. For the second practice session (FP2), I headed into the Paddock as a guest of Alfa Romeo and sat with Tiffany Cromwell and FNLD GRVL principle Amy Charity in the hospitality suite leading up to the session. Somewhat unexpectedly, Tiffany asked if we wanted to go into the garage to watch the practice session. Of course we did. We were fitted with headsets for ear protection and to hear Valtteri’s team radio.

The session itself was mostly consumed with 2023 tire testing. Valtteri would get instructions to do three push laps and come back to the garage to debrief, ostensibly recording feedback that would be passed on to Pirelli’s development team. As a first-timer in an F1 garage, I was frozen in my spot next to Tiffany as the team scrambled around with tires, tire blankets, wheel guns, tools and exhaust ports as Valtteri and his teammate Zhou Guanyu came in for tire changes and setup adjustments.

There was a monitor mounted above Valtteri’s spot in the garage, which displayed the live feed of FP2. It’s the same one everyone sees on ESPN and F1 TV. This is how we watched the on-track action from inside the garage. With about seven minutes left in the session, Valtteri was on track for his final laps (running P2, as it were) as the sun started to set on COTA. It was a beautiful shot. As the producers often do, they cut away from Valtteri to a shot of Tiffany sitting in the garage. Watching this in real time, I immediately realized I was in the shot to her left…but only from the neck down. So what did I do? I ducked my head down into the shot. But there’s a small lag on the feed. So I was there for a good second or two before realizing I was literally photo bombing Tiffany on live TV. The camera pulled out wider, and we had a good laugh about it. That was my two seconds of fame at the 2022 US Grand Prix.

5. The Formula One Paddock Club

The Paddock Club is located above the garages along the pit straight. It’s pretty much the same type of facility at every F1 race. It features a high-end dining experience with an open bar. This is paired with privileged access to the pit lane during certain times throughout the race weekend. And at the back of the Paddock Club, you look down on the Paddock itself, where the teams, drivers and people like Brad Pitt can be seen wandering around. The chefs and hospitality staff in the Paddock Club are also part of the F1 family that travels to most, if not all, of races. They always source local ingredients, but this staffing choice assures the Paddock Club experience is on a consistently high level from one event to another throughout the entire season.

The suites in the Paddock Club are similar to those at NFL and NBA stadiums in terms of being very comfortable places to take in the event. The suite itself is climate controlled with tables for dining, couches for relaxing and huge TVs for watching the action. The seating outside the suite looks down on the pit boxes and runs the length of the pits from Mercedes to Haas. My spot, coincidentally, was right above Alfa Romeo. This allows you to get a close-up of the pit stops during the race. It’s also a great place to watch the start, as I looked directly across to the grid’s second row.

That said, the only racing action you see from the Paddock Club is the pit straight, and this isn’t a place where overtaking happens. As a result, you end up watching much of the race inside on the massive TVs. Truth be told, this is the case with most in-person F1 experiences. You end up watching a lot of it on TV. The allure is more about the energy of actually being there. However, the viewing from Turn 12 at COTA is an exception. This vantage point offers a view down the back straight—where Alonso hit Stroll in spectacular fashion—into the heavy braking zone at Turn 12 and then the quick succession of turns 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17—where Vettel overtook Magnuson on the final lap in spectacular fashion. Plus, you can see clear across the track to Turn 1, and there are massive screens in front of the grandstands to watch the rest of the race. If you want plush and privileged, the Paddock Club is the spot. But if you want to see on-track action, Turn 12 is the place to be.

6. Race Analysis

Ferrari has been quick on Saturday (qualifying) throughout the season, but the Scuderia tends to lack race pace (or strategy follow-through) come Sunday. Well, that’s how it played out again in Austin. Carlos Sainz qualified on pole with Leclerc second. It was a Ferrari front row…until an engine penalty relegated Leclerc to P12. This put the 2022 World Driver’s Champion, Max Verstappen, alongside Sainz. Anyone who’s been paying attention to F1 for the past few seasons could tell you one thing for sure as the grid lined up on Sunday: Verstappen would come out of Turn 1 ahead of Sainz. As it turned out, Verstappen was well past Sainz before Turn 1, and it got worse for the Spaniard from there.

Sainz’s start from pole was atrocious. He knew this. The two Mercedes drivers behind him on the second row also knew this. What should Carlos have done? If you know COTA, then you know Turn 1 can be taken really wide at the start. The stewards typically allow for it, as it mitigates contact, and you can preserve track position when you return. What did Carlos do, instead? He turned into the apex in an effort to hold his second-place position, knowing full well the cars behind him had a better start. What happened? George Russell plowed into his side pod. Sainz spun and had to retire due to radiator damage. Russell received a five-second penalty and drove the remainder of the race with front-wing damage. The penalty was deserving, and Russell apologized. However, Sainz should have known better. He should have sought the safety of running wide out of Turn 1 and, worst case, given up a couple positions. As I tell my 15-year-old daughter, who’s just learning to drive, you want to avoid getting into an accident no matter who’s fault it is. And that comes down to driver skill, awareness and experience.

There was a glimmer of hope that Red Bull’s string of domination would come to an end when Verstappen had a slow pit stop. I watched from the Paddock Club as Leclerc’s two-second pitstop allowed him to overtake Verstappen during an 11-second pitstop. Meanwhile, Hamilton moved into second on track behind Vettel, who had yet to pit, so Hamilton was effectively the race leader. In the remaining laps, Verstappen closed a sizable gap to pass both Leclerc and Hamilton on track. The flying Dutchman won his 13th race this season, which tied the single-season win record shared by both Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher. He’s certain to break or smash that record in the remaining three races: Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. Verstappen’s victory also locked up the 2022 Constructor’s Championship for Red Bull, which ended an eight-year Mercedes reign. Incidentally, Mercedes or Red Bull have won the Formula One Constructor’s Championship for the past 14 seasons.