Austin’s 39 Podium Places Have Just One Exception to Four-Team Dominance
Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have collected every COTA Grand Prix podium finish except Romain Grosjean’s second place for Lotus in 2013.
Thirteen races. Thirty-nine podium places. Just one finish outside four teams.
Since Formula 1 first raced at Circuit of the Americas in 2012, Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have claimed 38 of its 39 Grand Prix podium finishes. Different drivers, changing regulations and shifts in competitive order have barely widened that group.
The exception came at Austin’s second race. Romain Grosjean split the Red Bulls in 2013, finishing behind Sebastian Vettel and ahead of Mark Webber.
Final United States Grand Prix classifications at COTA, 2012–2025. Sprints excluded. No race took place there in 2020.
How the 39 places divide
Red Bull: 13 podium finishes
Mercedes: 12 podium finishes
Ferrari: 10 podium finishes
McLaren: 3 podium finishes
Lotus: 1 podium finish
These are individual podium finishes. A team placing two cars in the top three receives two entries.
Mercedes built much of its total with first-and-second finishes in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019. Ferrari took both leading positions in 2024, while Red Bull put two drivers on the podium in 2013 and 2021.
McLaren’s three appearances are more widely separated: Lewis Hamilton’s victory in 2012, followed by Lando Norris’s second places in 2023 and 2025.
Together, the four teams account for 97.4% of Austin’s Grand Prix podium places.
Grosjean’s exception came with a competitive Lotus
Grosjean finished 6.284 seconds behind Vettel in 2013, with Webber another 2.112 seconds back.
Austin was his sixth podium of that season and his best finish. He had already finished third in Bahrain, Germany, South Korea, Japan and India.
Lotus ended the year fourth in the constructors’ championship with 315 points, comfortably ahead of McLaren’s 122. Grosjean’s result came from a team that regularly challenged near the front.
What makes it unusual is what followed. Every Grand Prix podium place awarded at COTA from 2014 through 2025 went to Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari or McLaren.
The final classification matters
The 2023 race shows why this count follows the official results rather than the podium ceremony.
Hamilton finished second on the road but was disqualified, as was Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, for technical infringements. The final top three became Max Verstappen, Norris and Carlos Sainz.
That moved a podium finish from Mercedes to Ferrari. It changed the distribution within the four-team group without creating another exception.
What Austin’s history tells us
Heading into the 2026 race, the striking feature is how consistently those four teams have occupied the podium despite changes in their relative strength.
That history doesn’t rule out a breakthrough. It establishes how rare one would be within COTA’s Grand Prix record.
Grosjean’s second place remains the only exception. Another team reaching the top three would add the first new name to Austin’s podium list since 2013.
