No surprises from Formula 1: Verstappen won the Miami Grand Prix pole & the Sprint race
Sunday’s Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix will begin the same as the previous five 2024 grands prix began — three-time defending world champion Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the pole position.
Verstappen took pole with a lap around the 3.36-mile (5.412 km) course at 1:27.241, 0.141 of a second faster than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and 0.214 faster than Leclerc’s teammate, Carlos Sainz.
Still, the winner of the previous two Miami Grand Prix events as well as Saturday afternoon’s 19-lap F1 Sprint event sounded less than thrilled
“It’s extremely difficult to make the tires work around the whole lap,” Verstappen said. “It’s not very consistent, let’s say it like that. It’s very difficult to put in the perfect lap. Every lap we put on the boards was a bit of guessing. We handled the situation well. We did the best we could. The car definitely felt nicer than yesterday.”
But, Verstappen also said, “I think we’ll be all right. We just need to be better than what we were today in the race.”
Behind the Verstappen, the two Ferrari drivers and Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez were McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, working cars fresh from being upgraded. Team principal Zak Brown said he thought the upgrades would get McLaren closer to Red Bull, but weren’t enough to catch the dominant team of the last three seasons.
“Yeah, Lando has a full set of upgrades,” Brown said Friday. “Oscar’s on “Upgrade Lite,” if you want to call it that. He doesn’t have the full set of upgrades, but does have upgrades on his car.”
In the noon F1 Sprint race, all of the drama happened behind Verstappen winning from pole and leading all 19 laps.
RB Honda’s Daniel Ricciardo started fourth and finished fourth, getting his first points of the season, after spending part of the race in third behind Leclerc. Perez got around Ricciardo for the final podium position, but Ricciardo and RB Honda teammate Yuki Tsnoda both getting points set off a celebration in the RB garage.
d
A rolling game of automotive dominoes, while fitting for Miami, counted as frustrating for McLaren’s Norris in Turn 1.
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, starting 12th, darted to the right of another former world champion, Fernando Alonso, and tried to go into a hole that wasn’t there. Hamilton bumped Alonso, who bumped his Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll, who bumped Norris off the track and into the pastel blue run off area.
“There was a gap on the inside, so I went for it,” Hamilton said on his radio before exceeding pit lane speed during the ensuing safety car period.
Norris was done. So was Stroll after bringing his car around to complete the lap. Alonso might as well have been. He dragged around to a 17th place finish, ahead of only Norris, Stroll and Haas Racing’s Kevin Magnussen. Magnussen piled up penalties like a hockey tough guy, three 10-second penalties for leaving the course and a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits.
Magnussen and Hamilton, 16th after his 20-second speeding penalty , had the wildest, if, ultimately pointless, tussle of the Sprint. As they approached Turn 11 late in the race, Hamilton got around Magnussen on the outside right. Magnussen defending his position at the hard left hand turn by continuing forward, and taking the turn very late. The lateness of his left forced Hamilton to avoid contact by going off the course.
This allowed Tsunoda to sneak inside Hamilton. Hamilton returned the pass, but Tsunoda moved back up to take the last point once Hamilton’s penalty got applied.
