Kimi Raikkonen wins the US Grand Prix, depriving Lewis Lewis of a title for the moment

AUSTIN, Texas – Kimi Raikkonen won the US Grand Prix, his first Formula 1 victory since 2013, while on Sunday Ferrari refused Lewis Hamilton's bid for a fifth career title in the series.

Hamilton, a Mercedes driver, could have closed the title of the season with a result that would have left him eight points ahead of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. But Hamilton finished third, he did not win the US Grand Prix for the first time since 2013, and Vettel's fourth place pushed the championship one more week in Mexico City.

Raikkonen, a former world champion, won a race that had a dazzling comeback. Hamilton charged late for the second goal, but Red Bull player Max Verstappen, who had fought on the field after starting 18th, denied. Vettel is fourth in the final laps to keep the championship alive.

Hamilton started the day with a 67-point lead over Vettel in the title heat and looked set to take another victory on the Circuit of the Americas, where he had won five of the previous six Grand Prix. Any finish that would give him eight points ahead of Vettel that day would have allowed him to win the championship and tie him with Juan Manuel Fangio for second place in the history of Formula One.

Hamilton started on pole, but quickly lost his position to Raikkonen in the first corner. Hamilton tried to squeeze Raikkonen inside on the climb, but the Ferrari dipped into the left turn on the descent.

Vettel was under pressure from the start. He took fifth place because of a three-point penalty for driving too fast under a red flag during a Friday training session.

At first, Vettel seemed to have tried to catch up too early. Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo turned Vettel around and dropped him to ninth place. The gap seemed too difficult to fill.

But Raikkonen, 39, who will leave Ferrari after this season to join Sauber, won.

Hamilton still takes a big lead over Mexico City, where he won the 2017 championship, but the Ferrari weekend shows that nothing will be guaranteed there either. Vettel was 0.061 seconds behind Hamilton in qualifying in Texas, and Raikkonen's victory showed that the red cars still had muscle to challenge the Mercedes.