AUSTIN (KXAN) — Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen claimed his record-tying 13th win of the 2022 Formula 1 season at Circuit of the Americas on Sunday.
Verstappen tied the winning marks of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel with the win. With a win in any of the three remaining races on the F1 schedule, Verstappen will stand all alone at the top with the most wins in a single season.
It was a bittersweet win for Red Bull Racing after its owner, Dietrich Mateschitz, died over the weekend. The team announced his death Saturday at the track in Austin but did not share where he died or the cause of his death. Mateschitz was 78 years old.
“It was a tough one, it was all looking good but I had to fight my way forward again,” Verstappen said after the race. “We gave it everything out there, it was a difficult weekend for us. This one was for Dietrich. The only thing we could do today was win.”
Having already locked up the season championship with his dominant performance all year, Verstappen started the race in second behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. Sainz crashed during the first lap of the race and did not finish. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton finished in second place, more than five seconds behind Verstappen, and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc worked his way into third place ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.
Verstappen overtook Hamilton with six laps left in the 56-lap race, but Verstappen’s race was nearly derailed by a slow pit stop that set him several seconds behind his English rival.
With Verstappen’s win and Perez finishing in fourth, Red Bull Racing clinched the constructors’ championship.
The annual racing event draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Lone Star State with a record 400,000 fans attending last year’s race weekend. Roughly 60,000-70,000 of those people are coming from out of state, COTA officials said.
