Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Max Verstappen took advantage of a sharp tyre strategy to move up from ninth on the grid to win the Miami Grand Prix. Polesitter Sergio Perez made it a Red Bull one-two, leading from the start until his pit stop, and briefly retaking the lead before Verstappen came out ahead for good with ten laps to go. Fernando Alonso continued his and Aston Martin’s fine form to convert second on the grid to the final podium spot, in third.
The one-two for Red Bull–their fourth in five races, and 15th win in their last 16 races–solidified their hold on the top of the standings, with Verstappen leading Perez by 14 points and Red Bull ahead of Aston Martin by 122 points–nearly three races’ worth of points after just five rounds of the championship.
After the front of the grid was jumbled by Charles Leclerc’s crash in qualifying, Verstappen was one of a handful of drivers to start on hard tyres. The start was relatively clean–a light tangle between Lando Norris and Nyck de Vries being the only notable incident, and one of the only incidents of any kind on this day–Perez led Alonso and Sainz from the start, but as the cars starting on mediums began dealing with graining issues within a handful of laps, Verstappen charged through the field.
By lap 8 he was in fifth, and by lap 15–barely a quarter of the way through the race–he had made it to second.
Perez came in after 20 laps, handing the lead to Verstappen. From there, the race settled into a waiting game up front, with the defending champion–whose pace was strong enough to set fastest laps on older hard tyres–trying to stay out long enough to build enough of a lead to stay ahead of his challenger teammate.
Ultimately, Verstappen came in for medium tyres on lap 46, and emerged behind Perez, albeit only about a second and a half back. On the softer, fresher tires, it wasn’t long before Perez’s lead evaporated, and after a couple laps Verstappen’s challenges were too much, as he passed Perez on the pit straight and held him off into turn 1 on lap 48.
Behind the podium finishers, George Russell took fourth for Mercedes, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz finishing fifth despite a five second penalty for a pit speed violation. Lewis Hamilton ran a similar hard-to-medium strategy as Verstappen and pulled himself up from thirteenth on the grid into sixth place, a class move on Leclerc into turn 11 the highlight.
Charles Leclerc brought his Ferrari in at the same time as Russell, but found himself bogged down in traffic, and was only able to manage seventh place in the late stages as he and Hamilton got around the Alpine of Pierre Gasly in the closing laps.
Gasly and teammate Esteban Ocon, another of the late-pitting cars from hard tires to mediums, finished in eighth and ninth, while Haas’ Kevin Magnussen scraped a point out from a surprise fourth starting position.
The rest of the field–least of all Ferrari, heading into one of their home races–next attempts to knock them off their perch in two weeks at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.
