2012 United States Grand Prix

The 2012 United States Grand Prix (formally the 2012 Formula 1 United States Grand Prix ) [ 1 ] was a Formula One motor race held at the Circuit of the Americas in Travis County , near Austin, Texas on November 18, 2012. The race, run over fifty-six laps, was the penultimate round of the 2012 championship . [ 6 ] It was the inaugural race at the circuit, and the first time the United States Grand Prix had been held since 2007 . [ 7 ] On Sunday a capacity crowd of 117,429 watched the race around ...

After a troubled construction period that saw a stop-work order issued in November 2011, [ 14 ] and the threat of the race being removed from the Formula One calendar altogether, [ 15 ] construction laid the final layer of tarmac on September 21. [ 16 ] The circuit passed its final pre-race inspection on September 25, allowing the race to go ahead as planned. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] By comparison, the most-recent additions to the Formula One calendar – the Korea International Circuit in South Korea and th...

Sebastian Vettel was the fastest driver in both the opening practice sessions, setting a time a second and a half faster than Lewis Hamilton in the Friday morning session, and two seconds faster than title rival Fernando Alonso . [ 27 ] The session was run without incident, though drivers reported that there was very little grip around the circuit. [ 28 ] Ma Qinghua was the only reserve driver to take part in the session, replacing Narain Karthikeyan at HRT . He finished the session in twenty-fo...

Vettel was again fastest in the Friday afternoon session, seven tenths of a second quicker than team-mate Mark Webber and Alonso. [ 29 ] Vettel's running was limited by a water leak that forced him to spend half the session in the pits, while Caterham's Heikki Kovalainen suffered a puncture when he made contact with Scuderia Toro Rosso driver Jean-Éric Vergne , and Pastor Maldonado suffered an engine failure in his Williams late in the session.

Vettel completed the trifecta of fastest lap times when he topped the final session on Saturday morning, finishing two and a half tenths of a second faster than Hamilton. [ 30 ] The hour-long session was marked by a collision between Sauber 's Sergio Pérez and the Marussia of Charles Pic that damaged the floor of Pic's car. Pérez escaped without penalty, much to the chagrin of Marussia. [ 31 ] Jean-Éric Vergne also ran into further trouble, breaking his front suspension when he hit a kerb and st...

With the surface of the circuit offering very little grip, every team sent their drivers out for extended runs in the first twenty-minute period of qualifying, with the objective of laying down enough rubber on the circuit to improve their overall lap time, and trying to time their final flying runs to take full advantage of the circuit.

HRT were initially concerned that they would fail to qualify inside the 107% cut-off, and therefore fail to qualify for the race. [ 32 ] These fears were not realised as they sent Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan out on the softer option tyres, allowing them to record faster lap times than if they had used the harder prime compound, which most of the front-runners would use in the first period so as to keep a set of soft tyres in reserve. Both de la Rosa and Karthikeyan qualified for the ...

Caterham's Vitaly Petrov struggled early in the session with traffic, and spent most of the twenty minutes outside the 107% cut-off. His final flying lap saw him qualify twenty-first for the race, one place ahead of team-mate Heikki Kovalainen . It was only the sixth time in eighteen races that Petrov had out-qualified his team-mate. Caterham later claimed that Karthikeyan's stoppage robbed them of the chance to set faster times, and the net result was that both Caterham cars qualified behind th...

Sebastian Vettel took pole position with the fastest lap of the weekend to date, setting a time of 1:35.657 on his final flying lap. In spite of this, Lewis Hamilton was closer to Vettel than he had been all weekend, missing pole position by just one tenth of a second. Mark Webber qualified third, ahead of Romain Grosjean , who was later demoted to ninth when he received a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change. [ 37 ] Kimi Räikkönen qualified fifth, expressing surprise at suc...

Webber, on the other hand, was called to answer charges of missing the mandatory weight check at the end of qualifying. The stewards accepted that Red Bull Racing had made an error and saw that the car was immediately sent to scrutineering once it was realised. Webber escaped with a reprimand, thereby allowing him to keep his grid position for the race. [ 42 ]

At the start, Vettel led from pole position and Webber passed Hamilton before entering the first corner. Alonso made a good start to gain 3 places. [ 43 ] Vettel opened up a lead over Webber before Hamilton passed the Australian in the DRS zone on the long straight from T11 to T12 on Lap 4. Webber would later retire on Lap 17 when KERS shut down and eventually the alternator failed on the Red Bull car. [ 44 ] Vettel would pit on Lap 22 but retained the lead over Räikkönen, Hamilton, Massa, and A...