Formula 1 heads back to Texas on 25 October for round 19 of the season, and for once the American leg of the calendar arrives with the title picture still very much alive.
Kimi Antonelli leads by a wide margin, 59 points clear of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, who sit level on 183 apiece, with Lando Norris a further 24 points back in fourth. None of that is set in stone. Singapore comes first on 11 October, and Circuit of the Americas has built a habit of handing out results nobody in the paddock saw coming.
A track that rewards patience, not just pace
COTA is one of the few circuits on the calendar that genuinely tests a car in every direction. Turn 1 is a blind, uphill hairpin that has swallowed more front wings than any corner in Austin’s short history, and it sets the tone for a lap that swings from the fast, snapping esses of Turns 3 to 5 into a back straight where cars are still touching 210mph before the brakes go on for Turn 12. Add the carousel around the Observation Tower and the tightening final corner known as the Andretti, and you get a lap that punishes a car set up for just one type of corner. Teams that get the balance right through low, medium and high-speed sections tend to be the ones celebrating on Sunday.
Pole position is not the whole story
Only around 42% of Austin winners have started from pole, and another third have come from second on the grid, so the front row still matters more often than not. What should give bettors pause is the last two years. Max Verstappen won in 2023 from sixth on the grid — the first time anyone had taken victory at COTA without starting on the front row — and Charles Leclerc followed a year later from fourth. Qualifying still counts for something in Austin but it is not the guarantee it once was.
Where the market sits
Antonelli goes into the weekend as favourite again, much as he has most Sundays since the summer, and the price on offer — somewhere around +150 depending on the book — is tight enough that backing him every single race would need him winning close to half the time just to break even. His last visit to Texas was actually one of his rougher weekends: he tangled with Carlos Sainz early on and never featured near the points. A single bad weekend twelve months ago does not say much about a driver who has finished on the podium in all but a handful of races since, and Mercedes have not looked short of pace anywhere this season.
Verstappen is the more obvious pick on history alone, and a price around +450 looks fair rather than generous. Four wins at COTA, including last year’s, and a Red Bull that has generally found strong traction out of Austin’s long list of direction changes. Hamilton holds the outright record with five wins in Austin — more than anyone who has ever raced there — and at +650 or so there will be a temptation to back him purely on the strength of that history now that he is racing for Ferrari. The form this year points the other way, and five wins collected between 2012 and 2017 is a long time ago in Formula 1 terms.
Norris and Leclerc both have the pace to be in the mix if qualifying goes their way, and Piastri cannot be ruled out on a weekend where McLaren usually finds decent pace regardless of how the wider season is going. Treat all of these as early numbers — prices will move plenty once Singapore is done and qualifying at COTA gets under way.
Heat, storms and an American accent
Race day temperatures in Austin in late October usually sit in the low eighties Fahrenheit (around 28°C), with lows dropping into the sixties (around 17°C) once the sun goes down. Roughly one day in five in the month brings rain somewhere in the area, enough that a wet Saturday or Sunday should not be ruled out. There is no sprint at COTA this year after the format shifted to different venues for 2026, so the whole weekend builds toward a single qualifying session and a single race — which tends to sharpen the picture rather than blur it with extra practice data.
It is also the first home race for Cadillac, the new American entry fielding Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez in their debut season, and Austin crowds have not needed much encouragement in recent years to turn COTA into one of the loudest weekends on the calendar. Expect the atmosphere — and the betting interest — to reflect that.
Getting a bet on
The tricky part for many American fans is that online sports betting is still not legal in Texas itself, so anyone at the track or watching from home in-state will need another route if they want money on the race. Rules vary sharply from one state to the next, and what is available in Nevada or New Jersey may not exist in Texas or California. It is worth checking localised sportsbook reviews before signing up anywhere, to see which operators are actually licensed where you live and what odds they are offering on the race.
As with most grands prix, the smart move is to wait and see who tops the times on Saturday before committing to anything. Antonelli remains the number to beat everywhere he goes this year, but Austin has broken that pattern before — and Verstappen in particular has made a habit of doing exactly that in Texas.
