United States Grand Prix qualifying postponed to Sunday

2015 United States Grand Prix

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The qualifying session for the United States Grand Prix has been postponed due to the heavy rain at the Circuit of the Americas.

Efforts to run the session on Saturday were abandoned after three hours of delays due to persistent rain which made the driving conditions impossible.

Qualifying will now take place on Sunday morning at 9am local time.

The rain is forecast to continue well into tomorrow morning and the track is likely to still be wet at the revised start time. However the showers are expected to become less frequent and less intense later in the day.

This is the first time a qualifying session has been postponed until race day since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    45 comments on “United States Grand Prix qualifying postponed to Sunday”

    1. I hope qualifying goes through and they don’t go by FP3 times, otherwise they are essentially handing the win to Hamilton on a silver plate.

      1. But the fight for second and third would be quite interesting. the championship is over anyways, let’s hope for a good race at least.

        Really excited for quali/race tomorrow. Let’s hope for a real wet race for once :D

        1. Knowing our luck recently it will be a wet qualifying then a dry race.

      2. Why? They where out pounding laps because they knew it could effectively be their qualifying positions, so they treated it as such, Lewis nailed it, Nico binned it, and Vettel got as high as he could knowing an engine penalty is coming. If that’s the grid then thats the grid.

      3. I guarantee we won’t get a much different outcome for Hamilton if the qualify happens tomorrow.

        Raining or not, he’ll be in front.

        But Hulkenberg and Bottas ahead, with Rosberg, Kimi and Vettel, close to each other and climbing the hill together might be interesting.

        1. Rosberg beating Hamilton in qualifying is not particularly uncommon, and it would make the race much more interesting.

          1. Would it? A Merc is a Merc, after all. It would be good to have a non-merc at the front row, potentially winning the start. Though if it´s wet, we might still have them spin into the gravel early on, or damage a front wing at least. Wherever the Mercs are, the interesting part is where they aren´t, and having something interesting happening at the front surely does help a GP.

      4. So if he is on pole tomorrow, will they be handing him the win on a silver plate too? Or should they run qualifying again? All the drivers were out in FP3 knowing fully well their times could count toward quantifying. Lewis set his best time on the SAME lap where others, inc Vettel were spinning off; as Ricciardo put it “right left and center”.

        Here is a quote from Ben Anderson (Autosport) – “That lap from Hamilton was mightily impressive. Beautiful control of his Mercedes in the conditions, catching the back end on occasion as it threatened to get away from him. A joy to watch”.

        If he is given his FP3 time, he fully deserves it.

        1. Is there a place to stream this for free anywhere? I doubt NBC will show it and NBCsports has soccer on all day. Would like to watch but don’t know where in the U.S.

          1. Check regular NBC. Since its a home race it might be on there rather the NBC sports

          2. Regular NBC has the US Grand Prix at 3 (prerace at 2:30). NASCAR is on NBC Sports Network starting at 2:00

    2. Unsurprising. It won’t be too surprising if they cancel qualy tomorrow, either. Pretty silly from McLaren to stop running so soon in FP3 considering that that was a serious possibility from the very beginning. It seems they can’t get anything right.

      1. And it seems like they are afraid of giving Red Bull a Honda PU too. It would be a smack in the face to realise bith their PU and their chassis sucks I guess …

        1. Both McLaren and Red Bull have stated, you cannot be world champions unless the team is the primary works team for the engine manufactures.

          If it was Horner rather the Dennis in this situation, with the veto, would he allow another first class team to use the same engine. I don’t think so, therefore is it being afraid or just plain, being sensible.

        2. I really hope RB gets the Honda engine so they can put Dennis in place, worksteam or not with the same engine RB will finish ahead of McLaren.

    3. Right decision, but as much as you can admire the race direction in trying desperately to wait as long as possible to give themselves every chance of getting a session in today, I can’t help but feel that was obvious that we wouldn’t have any qualifying this afternoon and the call should’ve been made much earlier than it was.

      I’m just sorry for all the passionate North American fans there in Austin who put up with being absolutely soaked in appalling conditions because they wanted to see some proper Formula 1 action. It always seems like the US fans are the ones who get shafted through no fault of their own.

      1. It was quite weird that the circuit shut fans out during the only running, in the name of health and safety.

      2. I left a an hour early. It was clear that the rain wasn’t going anywhere. There were WAVES going across the track. To be honest, at like 1:30 I thought they should just delay it.

      3. The rumour is that it was decided about an hour before qualli really started already @willwood with the 30 minute delays only a trick to play to the broadcasters

    4. Didn’t Pirelli take any rain tires?
      I don’t understand the reason behind this, ok if there is thunder & lighting maybe, but it’s it just rain.
      I hope the rain is even worse tomorrow!
      F1 is a shadow of itself now.
      Open the track & if the drivers want to race then let them.

      1. @alan77 You need to take a deep and think very carefully about what you just posted.

        1. Why?
          They used to race in the rain years ago.

          1. @alan77 Deep breath, careful thinking.

          2. True but you cannot race an F1 car in a river. A third of the annual rainfall has fallen that is about 10 inches of rain. Nobody can drive in that.

          3. @alan77, no offence, but you are taking a very narrow view when you look only at the safety of the drivers – they are not the only people out there whom the organisers have to take into consideration.

            When they cancelled the second practise session, the decision was made because it was considered too dangerous for the marshals to be able to operate equipment – would you volunteer to operate a crane when lightning strikes were being recorded in the area?

            As Keith showed when he linked back to the clips from the 2014 WEC 6 Hours race, when rainfall has struck the track in the past, it has tended to be extremely intensive. They had to suspend the 2014 6 Hours race for several hours after a freak downpour struck the track last year and around a dozen cars completely lost control and aquaplaned off the circuit – and that was in conditions that were not as severe as we witnessed yesterday.

      2. *(deep breath)

      3. It’s not the tyres that are the biggest issue. It’s aquaplaning because the cars are so low. It would be interesting to send them out on oversized tyres though…

        1. They can raise the ride-height of the cars like they always do when it is a wet track.

          1. @alan77 surely you cant be serious? The front edge of a Cat 5 hurricane was passing today. There was no way the cars could have run…the rivers were becoming lakes across the track. I’m all for balls out, brave racing but there still needs to be rational thinking involved.

            1. Ah…come on. They all could have taken turns in the Mercedes SUV. Doesn’t every driver want to be in a Merc?

              Maybe F1 could just become a SUV spec series. Think of the cost savings!

            2. It wasn’t a cat 5 after it passed the mountain ranges of Mexico, it was reduced to a storm.

          2. You are aware the wet tyres are taller than the slicks, right? And that this raises the ride height without any suspension adjustments, right? And how that is of absolutely no help when the track is doing a fine impression of the Atlantic Ocean, right?

          3. @alan77

            I just watched the 1989 Australian Grand Prix, and indeed it looked like there was more water on track back then through some stages of that race. Then again, there was no parc-ferme, vastly different rules about the floor of the car, no 15-20 year tradition of not driving in the properly wet (which obviously lead to both car-design and wet-tyre-design not aiming at running in those conditions anymore), and it still had drivers discussing not driving all together, with one certain multiple world champion refusing to drive.

            1. @crammond On that note, the stepped bottom/flat plank basically turns the car into a boat when it hits ‘rivers’. Just another reason to take it out of the rulebook (obvious danger from increased aquaplaning) and move back towards more ground effect, with the potentially closer racing it would allow an obvious benefit, alongside safer running in the wet, something that arguably should be a bigger priority after Japan 2014 IMO.

      4. @alan77 I’m assuming you weren’t there. I was, and there was no way they were going to run today. We’ve gotten 12 inches of rain in a single day.

        Where I was standing outside there was literally a river of water washing over our shoes. I waited until 3pm local time, and when they said they were going to wait and see until 4pm, I just left because the conditions hadn’t changed the entire day.

    5. Let’s hope for an awesome qualifying and race tomorrow and repay the fans at the track for their patience. I was impressed with how positive the crowd still seemed to be, the same goes for the teams trying doing their best to put on a show by doing all kind of weird things.

    6. It was the most entertaining non-session I’ve ever seen, thanks to the break dancing Force India mechanic and Daniil Kyvat’s juggling.

      1. There was an exiting slow motion replay of some mechanics throwing and catching a frisbee too!

        1. what the heck was that?!

      2. What about the two Dannys dancing? And don’t forget the Williams rowing team! :D

    7. And both Sauber and FI took a crate and pulled it up and down the pitlane. Also the remaining die hard fans in the grandstands were great, especially considering that they were allowed in only after the little track action we did have had ended (so they did not get to see FP3 at all).

    8. It will be nice if Keith put the GMT time in this article as well. US GP “TV times” article has not been updated either.

      1. Yes it has, it was done within minutes of the postponement.

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