Formula One

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

What to focus on after a United States Grand Prix that produced probably the best race of the season, with three outstanding story lines?

Max Verstappen fought back from an 11-second pit stop to pass his two biggest rivals and clinch a first constructors' title in nine years for a team that had lost its leader and creator less than 24 hours before.

Lewis Hamilton came as close as he has so far this year to a win, only to succumb to the inevitable and lose out to the Verstappen steamroller in the end.

And Fernando Alonso produced one of the drives of the season - one of the races of his long and illustrious career - to finish seventh in a car damaged in a 180mph crash in which it did a wheelie, smashed back into the ground and then a wall, and he dropped to the back of the field.

The Dutchman clinched his second world title at the last race in Japan, but since then Red Bull's world has been engulfed by the controversy of being found guilty of breaching the budget cap last season.

That subject dominated the weekend in Austin until an hour before qualifying, when the news broke of the death of Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz at the age of 78 after a long illness.

After qualifying third, Verstappen spoke movingly in tribute to Mateschitz, and he woke up on race morning determined to honour his memory with a win.

It looked like being easy until a pit-stop problem dropped him to third, behind Hamilton and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. But such is the pace of the Red Bull that he fought back past both with relative ease to achieve the result he so wanted.