Piastri leads McLaren 1-2 in Miami as tensions rise at Ferrari
Oscar Piastri led a domininant McLaren 1-2 finish at the Miami Grand Prix. After clearing pole sitter Verstappen the McLaren duo ran away with supreme pace and finished more than 30 seconds ahead of third place finisher George Russell.
Anxious of a possibly shower later on, the Miami Grand Prix kicked off at the scheduled time on a completely dry track. A shower at Miami has already shown earlier this weekend that it quickly makes the circuit too wet to drive, either from insufficient draining as well as lack of visibility, as was the case during the Sprint Race on Saturday.
When the cars took position on the starting grid it was clear that Verstappen was very active heating up his rear tyres, something the McLarens were apparently less worried about.
When the lights went out, Verstappen had a great start but overshot the first corner, enabling Norris to get alongside into the subsequent corners. Verstappen though forcefully pushed Norris wide and off the track in Turn 2, requiring the latter to slot in behind Albon, in 6th place. Antonelli meanwhile benefited and had a look at passing the Red Bull halfway into the lap but after that had to worry more about Piastri behind him rather than taking first place.
Halfway into the second lap a virtual safety car was activated as Doohan parked his Alpine due to damage incurred at Turn 1 when Lawson turned into the corner where Doohan also wanted to be.
At the beginning of lap 4 racing was back on with DRS enabled. DRS immediately enabled Piastri to get past Antonelli at the first opportunity while Norris also moved up a spot by passing Albon for 5th. One lap later Albon lost another place as Sainz also made it through. Norris followed that up with solid pressure on Russell and a clean pass at Turn 5.
As Piastri pressured Verstappen for first place, Norris further moved up a position on lap 9 by passing Antonelli. This put him 3rd, about 4 seconds behind the closely matched leading duo. There, Piastri was clearly faster but failed to make it past quickly.
Further back, neither Ferrari was able to make strides forward while Alonso was struggling to handle his Aston Martin, even spinning it on lap 10 while accellerating, leading into another lost position, then down to 18th.
On lap 14 the Australian finally found a way past when Verstappen tried his usual trick of outbraking the outside driver. Piastri though saw it coming and got his car stopped more quickly, turning into the corner earlier while Verstappen went off track. This immediately gave Norris DRS on Verstappen, resulting in an attempted pass at Turn 1. It failed, but the pressure was on. Two more failed attempts followed at Turn 1 before Norris got past at Turn 8, only to give the place back at Turn 16 to avoid any discussion about him going off track while making that pass.
One lap later Norris made a pass again, in the same way, but this time while staying on track. He made the move stick and distanced Verstappen out of DRS in a single lap. Piastri meanwhile had built up an 8-second advantage.
At the start of lap 20 George Russell reported rain. That clearly didn't bother Kick Sauber too much as they pitted Bortoletto half a lap later to take on a fresh set of hard tyres.
Indeed, some more light drops were reported and predicted over the next laps but nothing that bothered the teams enough to postpone stops or even switch to any other tyre.
The McLarens up in front were less than bothered and both lapped at least a second a lap faster than the rest of the field. By the time Verstappen pitted on lap 27, Norris already had 7 seconds in hand on the Red Bull driver while his disadvantage to Piastri remained pretty much constant.
A single lap after Verstappen's stop, and just after the Dutchman had gotten past Hamilton, Bearman had an engine failure that triggered a virtual safety car to clear the car from where it got parked. This triggered several stops, the first of which for Hamilton as he was the first to pass at the pitlane entry.
Piastri, Norris, Russell, Leclerc all followed. When Russell exited the pitlane he emerged ahead of Verstappen. When another VSC was triggered 4 laps later, Verstappen immediately requested for Russell to be checked if he followed the rules.
That VSC was necessary to clear Bortoletto's failing car when he was unable to make it to the pits after being asked to retire it from the race there. Still, bad luck for some is luck for others, so the restart gave Leclerc an opportunity to pass Sainz. After virtually running aside the Williams between Turns 16 into Turn 1 the Ferrari driver made it past. Hamilton, who saw everything happen just in front of him kept it clean and also made it past Sainz in the same move.
Hamilton was easily able to follow his teammate in the following laps, partly thanks to his softer tyre, triggering a call to let him pass Charles. As the team didn't comply soon, Hamilton got annoyed up to the point he said "You guys....", followed by "This is not good teamwork man, that's all I can say". Sure enough, half a lap later, Hamilton made it past in an attempt to reel in Antonelli, but that too didn't hold him back of criticism, telling his engineer it was way too late, and that they should "have a tea break while you're at it".
Two laps later it was Leclerc's turn to complain, claiming Hamilton wasn't advancing very much, leaving him in dirty air and causing additional wear on his tyres. The gap Hamilton was able to pull on his teammate was surely disappointing, but then again maybe proving his point that Ferrari should have made the switch earlier. With 10 laps left, Hamilton and Leclerc were jointly cutting into Antonelli's advantage by nearly half a second a lap while also slowly dropping Sainz.
5 laps from the end, after more complaining by Leclerc, Hamilton is told to swap again. He complied only half a lap later and then, when told Sainz was 1.4 seconds behind, he quipped "You want me to let him past as well?". Clearly the race debrief will be interesting at Ferrari.
Up in front, the McLarens stamped their dominance with unbelievably consistent pace, overpowering the rest of the field with much much better tyre longevity.
