Max Verstappen arrived in Austin for Sunday's United States Grand Prix and spent his Thursday media session attacking the track rather than previewing the race. The Verstappen COTA surface criticism was blunt: the bumps at Circuit of The Americas are "out of control" and "unacceptable." He comes in off back-to-back wins, his first two victories of the season, and still chose to talk about his spine.
Verstappen COTA surface criticism lands hard
Verstappen pointed to what he had seen from the World Endurance Championship running at the track as evidence. "From what I saw in the WEC, the circuit was extremely bumpy," he said. "I'm not really looking forward to that to be honest, for your spine."
He said the joke he made about his back at the previous race was not really a joke. The team has raised the issue for years, he added, and the situation has drifted rather than improved. Finding a setup compromise around the worst sections, he suggested, will be difficult, and he does not know how the car will respond.
COTA is generally rated among the most popular layouts on the calendar by drivers. That is what made the tone notable. Verstappen repeatedly separated the venue from the problem: he loves the track, the layout, the city. The surface is the grievance.
Spine checks and the safety question
Verstappen said medical checks have shown that "the bottom end" of his spine "doesn't look that great," and framed the damage as cumulative from recent cars. He accepted that some of this comes with racing, then drew a line: continuing to treat the surface as acceptable will make the damage worse.
His proposed fix is not cosmetic. Patch grinding here and there, he argued, is "putting a plaster on the big problem" — what sits underneath. He said the answer is to open up the track fully and reinforce the base, which costs money and time, and that organisers should have anticipated the soil issue when the venue was built.
Norris and Russell split on the bumps
Lando Norris offered a more physical account. He said he takes headache tablets before driving at certain tracks because the bumps knock his head against the headrests. "It's pretty bad," he said, and not a nice thing to deal with.
Norris also made a regulatory point: a brand-new circuit built today would have to meet much tighter tolerances and COTA would not come close. Because it is an old track, that standard does not apply. He added that drivers have complained many times and there is limited further action available to them.
George Russell was more measured, calling the bumps "just part of racing," but widened the argument to surfaces across the season. Tarmac coming up and falling apart, he said, is causing more problems than it solves, and circuits probably need repaving every couple of years for consistency.
His technical explanation matters for anyone wondering why the cars suffer so much. Ride height at the end of a straight is around 10mm, he said, roughly a centimetre from the ground. Since F1 moved to 18-inch wheels, the sidewall has shrunk while the rim grew, removing the damping effect the tyre used to provide.
Why the surface issue keeps returning
The gap between Verstappen and Russell is not really about whether the track is bumpy. Both agree. The difference is what counts as normal wear and what counts as a failure to maintain. Russell frames repaving as routine housekeeping; Verstappen frames it as a safety obligation being deferred.
That distinction has a competitive cost too. A bumpy lap forces teams into softer compromises, and Verstappen explicitly said he does not yet know how his car will react. On a weekend where he is chasing a third straight win, that uncertainty is a real variable rather than a talking point.
The Austin weekend runs through Friday practice, Saturday qualifying and Sunday's race. Whether the surface becomes a story again will depend on what the cars look like over the worst sections — and on whether anyone commits to digging up the track instead of grinding it.
The original report is from skysports.com.
