AUSTIN — For the third year in a row, the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) hosted a sprint race weekend for Formula 1 on the track just outside of Austin, Texas. For the third year in a row, Max Verstappen led every single lap of the COTA sprint race in his Red Bull. This year, he also led every single lap of the feature race, maximizing his point haul.

As the 24-race season goes into the final five races, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri mitigated the damage to his lead as best as he could, now leading his teammate Lando Norris by only 14 points, and leading Verstappen by only 40 points. There is a lot of hype around the significant contrast between Verstappen’s stellar performances and Piastri’s lackluster ones of late, and here is where I stand.

Hype No. 1: Max Verstappen has made this a three-way title fight.

For several weeks, pundits have hyped up Verstappen’s performance and have warned to never count out the current driver champion (more specifically, the four-time consecutive world champion!). As resistant as I was early on to buy into this hype, I’m fully on board now.

Forty points probably sounds like a lot, but Verstappen was behind by 104 points after his home race in the Netherlands, just five races earlier. Reeling in Piastri by 64 points over four races is a massively impressive feat. Piastri helped Verstappen out with his crash in Azerbaijan followed by fourth and fifth place finishes in the last two races, but that in no way diminishes what Verstappen has been able to do.

No driver in F1 history has ever overcome such a large deficit (even if you adjust for the various point formats over the years), but if any driver could do it, my money is on Verstappen who has incredible talent behind the wheel. Red Bull as a team has struggled mightily throughout the season, enough that the team shook up the management structure, replacing the manager of the team. Since that point, Verstappen’s side of the garage has found performance in spades and he challenges for poles and wins every race weekend again.

There are five races left in the season, as well as two sprint races. Since first place earns 25 points and 8 points, respectively, for those races, a driver who earns first place in all the remaining races would score a total of 141 points. Verstappen is absolutely able to do this.

If a driver earns second place in all the remaining races, feature and sprint, they would earn 104 points. If that driver was Piastri (more on that later), the hypothetical difference between Verstappen’s 141 points for winning everything and Piastri’s haul of 104 for all second places is 37 points, three shy of the current 40-point gap.

In short, Piastri would still be world champion in that scenario. Thus, the fate of the championship is more in Piastri’s hands than Verstappen’s, but that doesn’t mean either driver is going to do anything less than try to win every remaining race.

Hype No. 2: Piastri lacks the mental fortitude to finish the season as driver’s champion.

This is hype I absolutely do not buy. Every single driver who has won a championship throughout the history of F1 has had hiccups along the way. Some drivers have come darn close to a perfect season, but no one has been able to win every single race and simply waltz their way to taking home the championship; the sport doesn’t work that way.

Coming into this season, very few people, if any, were suggesting Piastri would have any kind of shot at being the world champion. Money was on Norris with the highest odds and Verstappen with the second highest. People also forget this is only Piastri’s third season in F1 and he has shown a cool, calm demeanor throughout his short career.

Back in the first race in Australia, Piastri spun out of second place on a wet track and was stuck for some time, losing place after place. He got his car going again and managed to recover to ninth place, earning just two points. I said then that it was a drive that could define a world champion, and I stick by that.

Sure, Azerbaijan was a hot mess for Piastri as he crashed in qualifying, jumped the start, nearly stalled his car, and then crashed out in the first corner. Yes, he has only managed fourth and fifth in the last two races. Do three races form a full pattern?

At COTA in 2024, Piastri was fifth and in 2023, he didn’t finish the race after a first-lap collision (something shared with this year’s sprint race, actually). COTA isn’t a great track for Piastri, so his struggles here this year didn’t come as a huge surprise.

Looking back at the first 16 races of the season, Piastri was on the podium 14 times. Norris just passed that at COTA, earning his fifteenth podium of the season, so Piastri is still in good company.

Is he rattled? Maybe. There is a lot of pressure in trying to be the best at a sport. F1 is psychological nearly as much as it is physical which can be seen most clearly in close title fights (just research the feud between teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg from 2013-16).

But, is Piastri in a doom spiral? Time will tell, but I’m guessing he’ll find his form back.

Hype No. 3: Lewis Hamilton is back!

Yeah, I don’t get this one. Hamilton left Mercedes, a team that helped Hamilton win six championships (nearly eight) in the twelve seasons he raced with them, for Ferrari before this season started. In the history of F1, Ferrari is the only team that has been in every season and has a massive following. The obvious comparison in American sports would be LeBron James heading to the Lakers because of the history with that team.

Pairing up Hamilton with Charles Leclerc seemed like a dream-team style pairing on paper. In reality, Hamilton has struggled massively with the Ferrari this season. For a driver who rewrote the record book over his career, seeing him absent from the podium through nineteen races is very unexpected. His one shining moment this season was a win in the sprint race in China, but in feature races, he just hasn’t had the performance.

This weekend, Hamilton finished in fourth in both the sprint race and the feature race. The two McLaren cars crashed out of the sprint race along with Fernando Alonso, and Nico Hulkenberg had severe damage. All of these drivers outqualified Hamilton and their demise is the reason he finished fourth.

In the feature race, Hamilton qualified fifth and finished fourth, only passing George Russell’s Mercedes on the first lap. He was never able to put any real pressure on Norris, who was passed by Hamilton’s teammate Leclerc on the opening lap.

By the end of the race, Hamilton faded back to 28.5 seconds behind winner Verstappen, and 13 seconds behind his teammate in third. Piastri closed in to 1.142 seconds at the checkered flag and, if there were just a couple more laps, could’ve passed Hamilton.

Everyone claiming the seven-time world champion is somehow back with such a lackluster performance in the weekend just boggles my mind. This was far from a great performance and seems to be much more people wanting Hamilton to be back then it is him actually finding any form back on track.

So, I buy one-third of the hype after this race, and am really interested to see what Verstappen will be able to do as this season winds down. Piastri will hopefully bounce right back and make things even more exciting. Hamilton, however, will play no meaningful role in the rest of the season.

F1 had another quick turnaround with a race taking place in Mexico City, Mexico on Sunday, Oct. 26. Brazil is next on the calendar with the race taking place on Sunday, Nov. 9, at 12 p.m. Eastern Time.