2024 US GP Sprint Race Preview

Now, it is time for James Punt 2024 US GP Sprint Race preview. He has already posted an outright, team by team preview, you can read that here.

2024 US GP Sprint Race

Yesterday’s Sprint Qualifying may have ended Lando Norris’ slender hopes of a World Championship. The McLaren looked strangely unstable and hard to drive, and that is how it turned out. Norris qualified only fourth and just to make it worse, Piastri had a time deleted for exceeding track limits, and ended up in sixteenth place.

Verstappen will start the Sprint from pole position and alongside him is George Russell, in a Mercedes which had looked very tricky to drive in practice. Hamilton only managed to qualify in seventh, but his lap was hit by a yellow flag. Our pick for sprint qualifying, Charles Leclerc, was third.

There was a Sprint race here last year and it wasn’t great, and I don’t think that many of the Sprint races are. The big points are dished out on Sunday and later tonight, we have the qualifying for tomorrow’s race. The drivers are not going to take any risks that may cause damage to the car and a compromised qualifying session, or worse.

Pole Position Key

Last year the pole sitter won, the second and third placed drivers swapped places, fourth stayed fourth. We have had three sprint weekends in 2024 and it was much the same. In Miami, the top six on the grid finished the race in the same places as they qualified in.

In Austria the pole sitter won, second and third swapped places, while fourth to sixth all held their grid positions. Only China saw things get mixed up, with the pole sitter dropped to sixth place, the winner came from fourth place and the third placed driver was classified last after a crash.

Not Much In It

The two sessions from yesterday showed there wasn’t much between the top teams, but it was Verstappen who did the best job, hooking up a near perfect lap, while others made small errors or in Hamilton’s case, got unlucky.

The Red Bull was better on the soft tyre, and Verstappen may find it harder in the sprint. McLaren may have the faster car over the long runs, but not by much, and their two drivers did not deliver the goods when it mattered.

Ferrari were very quick on the medium compound but struggled on the softs which had to be used in Q3. Back on the mediums, they should be stronger in the sprint race.

Cautious Approach

My guess for this race is that we will have a fairly cautious approach, especially from those involved in the title fight. Drivers like Russell and Hamilton, although he is too far back, can go for it and not really have to worry too much if it goes wrong.

The Mercedes upgrade got the thumbs up from both drivers. Hamilton lost out by catching a yellow flag and had to back off, He was on a lap that would have got him pole position. Russell ended up just 0.012 seconds behind Verstappen. I would expect Russell to have a real go today.

The other great performances came from the two Haas drivers. Qualifying sixth and eighth on merit was an excellent result. Only Hulkenberg was running the upgraded car, but Magnussen will have the new package for the Grand Prix qualifying and race.

Pierre Gasly in the upgraded Alpine was twelfth, his teammate in the old spec car just seventeenth.

Alex Albon had a day to forget, but Colapinto recovered to qualify tenth. He continues to impress, and is beginning to lower the stock of Albon, for so long flattered by having useless teammates.

2024 US GP Sprint Race Selections

In terms of pace, there is very little between Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren. Ferrari looked the best car on the medium tyres, which brings them into the frame. Verstappen starts from pole, which is the place to be in these short races, but he doesn’t have a car advantage.

The Mercedes looks quick after they made it more driveable between practice and the sprint qualifying. I wasn’t totally sold on the McLaren, nor their drivers.

The clock watchers have their car down as the fastest, but by the smallest of margins. However, it looked a bit skittish and not the beast that they had going into the autumn break. Norris’ body language was poor afterwards. That suggested to me that he wasn’t impressed.

Piastri found keeping the car on the track a challenge all day. They can change the set ups before qualifying proper later today. So the weekend is not yet lost, but the sprint race looks gone.

Max Is Fav

Max Verstappen is the 1.73 favourite which is fair enough given the pole sitter’s record in sprints. However, he has no real pace advantage, especially on the mediums, and just how hard is he going to fight, say Russell or Leclerc? His job is to beat Lando Norris.

George Russell is 5.00 across the board and looks a decent each way bet. If he holds his place the bet would yield a small profit, but the win part is a live contender.

2024 US GP Sprint Race Tip: 1 point e/w George Russell to win the Sprint race @ 5.00 with Ladbrokes, Boylesports, BET365, Skybet

There is one match bet which looks decent value.

I have been very impressed by Colapinto in the Williams. He looked to be struggling in an ill-handling Williams in FP1, ending up nineteenth, but he got it together for qualifying and was tenth at the end. Colapinto spun on his first effort in Q3 and that meant he couldn’t make further progress on flat spotted tyres, so he should have a bit more pace today. He felt that he should have made the top eight.

Tsunoda ended up finishing one place ahead of Colapinto, but admitted that their car is slower than the Williams. He does have a tendency to qualify better than he races, or the car is not quite so good on long runs. Colapinto is the opposite in his three races so far.

2024 US GP Sprint Race Tip: 1 point Colapinto to beat Tsunoda @ 2.77 with Livescorebet

There will be a brief update for qualifying later but I am not expecting to be doing much. The qualifying sessions are just too tricky with the cars so sensitive to small condition changes.

-JamesPunt