Max Verstappen secured pole for the Miami Grand Prix with a commanding lap for Red Bull in Florida. He beat the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz into second and third at the Miami International Autodrome by about a tenth of a second, having already taken victory in the sprint race earlier on Saturday.
Lewis Hamilton continued to struggle for Mercedes, managing only eighth place with his teammate, George Russell, in seventh. Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez was fourth and McLaren’s Lando Norris was fifth.
Verstappen had not enjoyed the grip and balance he had been looking for early in the weekend but appeared to have successfully adjusted the car’s set-up after the sprint race. He looked once more comfortably in control, suggesting he will be in excellent shape for the race.
On the first hot laps in Q3, Hamilton, who still looked to be struggling for balance as he had in the sprint, opened the session with a strong run but was swiftly eclipsed by Russell, only for Verstappen to throw down the gauntlet with a 1 min 27.241second lap – over a tenth up on Leclerc.
The Monegasque driver was nonetheless close enough to make a fight of it for the final runs. Verstappen led the way, quickest in the first sector, with Leclerc almost matching him for time. Verstappen could not improve over the rest of the lap but then neither could Leclerc, with the Dutchman maintaining his grip on the single-lap discipline this season.
The pole, Verstappen’s sixth in a row, ensures he remains unbeaten in qualifying this season. But this is the first time he has taken the top spot in Miami, a race he has won on both the previous occasions it has been held, including last year when he took victory after coming back from ninth on the grid.
After the surprise news that the team’s enormously successful car designer Adrian Newey is to leave Red Bull next season was announced on Wednesday, Verstappen gave no indication he had been in anyway perturbed by the decision.
He had been struggling with the grip and balance in Miami but the level of his advantage remains such that even while wrestling somewhat with the all-conquering Red Bull, he still enjoyed enough of an upper hand to close out a strong victory in the sprint race.
In what was another fairly tame procession of a sprint in which the order of top six remained as they had been on the grid, he did enough to hold Leclerc off in second, with Pérez in third.
Behind them however it was Daniel Ricciardo who returned perhaps the most impressive drive. Having qualified on fourth he held his place in the RB, punching well above its weight and delivering a timely reminder of the Australian’s talent. He was feisty in holding off both Sainz and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri but in so doing also demonstrated that a circuit where overtaking is tricky at best is not well-suited to holding the 100km dash format.
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Similarly, down the field Hamilton endured an almost race-long scrap with Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, with the Dane also creating a train behind him but to no avail for either driver. Magnussen copped no fewer than four penalties for his overly aggressive defending and was demoted to 18th, while Hamilton, already enduring a difficult weekend, found himself dropped to 16th for speeding in the pit lane.
The British driver had made an opportunistic move up the inside at turn one from the start, causing Fernando Alonso to clatter into his teammate, Lance Stroll, who collected Lando Norris’s McLaren, taking the latter out of the race. It was classed as a racing incident but illustrated that, with the Mercedes so off the pace in Miami, Hamilton feels he has little to lose. “There was a gap on the inside so I went for it,” he told his team.
After five rounds Verstappen leads the drivers’ championship by 27 points from Pérez.
Piastri was sixth, Nico Hülkenberg ninth for Haas and Yuki Tsunoda in 10th for RB. Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso were in 11th and 15th for Aston Martin, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon in 12th and 13th for Alpine, and Alex Albon in 14th for Williams.
Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou were in 16th and 20th for Sauber, Logan Sargeant in 17th for Williams, Daniel Ricciardo 18th for RB and Magnussen in 19th.
