Gusty winds couldn’t keep Mercedes Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton from breaking his own track record, which he set just yesterday. Hamilton’s 1:34.478 lap is the new F1 track record around Circuit of the Americas, proving once again that Hamilton’s still the F1 Lap King of COTA.
The session was interrupted by a yellow flag to retrieve Romain Grosjean’s beached Haas off Turn 7. Grosjean wasn’t the only driver to have problems, however. Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat had to come in for a new pedal linkage after experiencing a front end issue on track, and was not able to return. Sebastian Vettel also briefly forgot which team he drives for now and tried to pull into Red Bull’s pit stall.
But two drivers did extremely well: Lewis Hamilton and his main championship rival Sebastian Vettel. Vettel’s Ferrari also broke Hamilton’s record lap time from yesterday with a 1:34.570 lap, but that was only good enough to be the second fastest in this session.
Holy crap, these cars are fast. We’ll see which insanely quick F1 car is the fastest later today in qualifying, which starts at 4:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN.
Full results: