Racing | Formula 1 | 2015 United States Grand Prix — Hamilton Secures His Third Championship at Austin

On 25 October 2015, Lewis Hamilton won the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Travis County near Austin, securing his third Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship with three races remaining.

Nico Rosberg started from pole for Mercedes after setting 1:56.824 in a rain-shortened qualifying session, with Hamilton alongside him and the Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat on the second row.

The race began on a wet track with intermediate tyres. Hamilton and Rosberg made contact at Turn 1, and the shifting conditions then brought Ricciardo and Kvyat into contention before the circuit dried and the Mercedes cars recovered their pace.

Repeated safety-car and virtual-safety-car periods compressed the field. Rosberg regained the lead late in the race, but ran wide at Turn 12 after the final restart, allowing Hamilton through with eight laps remaining.

After 56 laps, Hamilton finished in 1:50:52.703, 2.850 seconds ahead of Rosberg. Sebastian Vettel recovered from thirteenth on the grid to finish third, 3.381 seconds behind the winner, while Max Verstappen placed fourth.

The victory was Hamilton’s tenth of the season and forty-third of his Formula 1 career. It increased his championship lead over Vettel to 76 points with only 75 still available, making Hamilton champion for the third time after his 2008 and 2014 titles.

Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen had each received a ten-place grid penalty for using an additional power unit, while Valtteri Bottas took a five-place gearbox penalty. Carlos Sainz finished sixth on the road but a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane placed him seventh; none of these penalties altered the podium.

The event used Circuit of the Americas’ permanent Grand Prix configuration introduced in 2012: a counter-clockwise, 20-turn course measuring 5.513 kilometres. Fifty-six laps produced a scheduled distance of 308.405 kilometres.

The circuit pin marks the track at 30.132778, -97.641111 rather than central Austin. The diagram by Gustavo Girardelli incorporates OpenStreetMap data and is licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 and ODbL; the uploaded version is flattened onto a white background, and that modification is disclosed.

Sources: [Formula 1 race classification](https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2015/races/933/united-states/race-result), [Formula 1 starting grid](https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2015/races/933/united-states/starting-grid), [Formula 1 2015 standings](https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2015/drivers), [independent Motor Sport race report](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/database/races/2015-united-states-grand-prix/), [independent Autosport classification](https://www.autosport.com/f1/results/2015/united-states-gp-488132/), [Circuit of the Americas campus record](https://circuitoftheamericas.com/), and [Wikimedia Commons image and coordinate record](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austin_circuit.svg).