USA · COTA

United States Grand Prix

Circuit of the Americas

5.513 km

Lap length

56

Laps

20

Corners

2

DRS zones

Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas
Photo: Earl McGehee (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons
City
Austin, Texas
First GP
2012
Race distance
308.405 km
Lap record
1:36.169 · Charles Leclerc (2019)
Round 17 United States Grand Prix USA

America’s modern F1 home

COTA was built specifically to bring F1 back to the United States in 2012 — a Tilke design with deliberately copied corner sequences from Silverstone, Spa, and Hockenheim. The result, despite being a copy-paste track, is genuinely good: a steep uphill Turn 1, the high-speed esses (Turns 3–6, lifted directly from Maggotts/Becketts), and the long back straight ending in Turn 12 (lifted from Hockenheim’s stadium section).

Why it matters

The US Grand Prix in Austin grew F1’s American audience long before Drive to Survive. Verstappen has won here multiple times; Hamilton’s 2015 championship win came at COTA. The track surface is famously bumpy in places — a result of poor underlying ground engineering during construction — and modern F1 cars hate the bumps under braking.

What to watch for

  • Turn 1 — the steep blind uphill braking zone. Multi-car lap-one incidents are routine.
  • The esses (Turns 3–6) — pure Suzuka rhythm. Beautiful on TV.
  • Verstappen’s quali laps in Sector 2 — his lap times here are statistically the best on the modern grid.