Max Verstappen may not have had a chance to challenge for the pole after a crash in qualifying, but he more than made up for it with a stellar showing at the Miami Grand Prix. The Dutchman made his way from ninth to the lead with ten laps remaining, and never looked back.
Passing his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez reasserts Verstappen’s comfortable gap in the championship lead, with an extra point for the fastest lap to boot. The gap is now 119 to 105 points in Verstappen’s favor, while third-place Alonso trails with 75.
“It was a good race,” Verstappen said. “I stayed out of trouble at the beginning and then just had a clean race, picked the cars off one by one. Then I could stay out really long on the hard tyres and that’s where I think we made the difference today.”
“I had a good little battle with Checo [Perez] at the end. We kept it clean and that’s the most important – it’s a great win today. Yesterday was of course a bit of a setback, today we just kept it calm, kept it clean, and for sure winning a race from P9 is always very satisfying.”
Perez said he just couldn’t compete with Verstappen’s pace, and echoed the common complaint from the field about excessive tire wear at the track.
“I tried. I gave it my all. We had [tire] graining and initial pace wasn’t good.”
“The medium [tire] we had initially was poor, more than expected. It really compromised our pace and Max had tremendous pace on the hard. We will analyze what went wrong today because we simply didn’t have the pace.”
Fernando Alonso’s third-place finish is his fourth podium finish in five races for Aston Martin. He had a good race from his front-row starting spot to earn best-of-the-rest behind the dominant Red Bulls.
George Russell was fourth, ahead of Carlos Sainz and Russell’s Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton. Charles Leclerc, whose crash in qualifying brought out the red flags that took Verstappen out of order, ended up seventh.
Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon finished eighth and ninth, while Kevin Magnussen earned a point for Haas with a tenth-place finish.
It was a disappointing debut for Florida driver Logan Sarjeant. The Fort Lauderdale-native was forced to pit on the second lap for a new front wing.
F1 returns on May 21st for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.
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| 2 | +5.384s | 18 | |
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| 9 | +58.123s | 2 | |
| 10 | +62.945s | 1 | |
| 11 | +64.309s | 0 | |
| 12 | +64.754s | 0 | |
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| 18 | +88.949s | 0 | |
| 19 | +1 lap | 0 | |
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