ANALYSIS: Conventional strategy despite softer compounds

Despite the softer compounds and extremely high track temperatures, drivers were eager to complete last Sunday's Miami Grand Prix with a conventional one-stop strategy. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo looks back at the Floridian round, delivering his strategy analysis.

McLaren struggled to beat their rivals over a single qualifying lap, but their MCL39 came alive in race trim, showing truly dominant performance.

Lando Norris got a great start last Sunday and was challenging Verstappen into the first couple of corners, but the Dutchman defended his lead hard, and the Briton was forced to run wide at Turn 2, losing four places and dropping back to sixth.

However, he managed to quickly regain the places he lost at the start, albeit he needed to fight hard against Verstappen, who was eager to hold onto his position.

By the time he picked off Verstappen, Oscar Piastri had built a huge gap and was imperious. Although Norris was constantly closing the gap to his team-mate in the remainder of the race, Piastri’s lead proved too big an advantage to overhaul.

It was a prefect weekend for the Woking-based squad as they scored the maximum 58 points in Miami: first and second in the Sprint and another one-two in tthe Grand Prix. Piastri recorded his fourth Grand Prix win of the season, the third in a row and the sixth of his career. It was McLaren’s 51st one-two finish, its second this season.

As for the strategies, there were no real surprises. Pirelli went a step softer for the Miami Grand Prix, hoping that the softer tyre selection might lead to a bigger variety in terms of strategy. It meant that the C5 compound served as the soft, the C4 as the medium and the C3 as the hard rubber.

The sprint schedule of the weekend meant that drivers had very limited time to complete longer, heavy-fuel runs on Friday, but the early indications showed that the single-stop strategy might emerge as the fastest way to complete the 57-lap race distance in Florida.

Reflecting on the Miami Grand Prix in terms of race strategies, Pirelli's motorsport director Mario Isola noted: “It was a very straightforward race as far as the tyres were concerned.

"From the little data gathered over the weekend it had become clear that, despite bringing a trio of compounds one step softer than last year’s in order to create more strategy choices, it would probably still be a one-stop race and so it proved to be."

As the sprint race took place in damp conditions, the 100km dash did not provide any data for the behaviour of the slick compounds. However, it had been expected that tyre wear would be relatively low, albeit the thermal degradation had been expected to cause an issue on the hot surface.

Although the F1Academy's Sunday's race was cancelled due to a heavy downpour, the track pretty much dried up for the F1 race. There was a constant threat of rain during the 57-lap race distance, but the cells around the Miami region avoided the track.

As predicted prior to the event, on the grid the drivers were split into two groups. 13 of them opted for the Medium tyre for the first stint, thus adhering to the theoretically quicker strategy and the rest who went with the Hard.

Of the top ten drivers, only Mercedes driver George Russell elected to start on the mediums, and six others starting from the back end of the grid opted for the white-walled tyres: Lewis Hamilton, Oliver Bearman, Liam Lawson, Pierre Gasly and Nico Hulkenberg.

While these seven drivers had less grip available at the start, they were banking on being able to delay the pit stop window, in the hope of making the most of a safety car period in which to pit, or to deal with the possibility of rain, the threat of which was there throughout the race.

It was interesting to note that Aston Martin continued to use scrubbed tyres, with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll having put an installation lap into both their medium and hard tyres.

Williams driver Carlos Sainz was the only other driver to use a scrubbed set of tyres, with the Spaniard having started the race on a used set of mediums.

Isola conceded that Pirelli was surprised by the low level of degradation in Miami: "There was very limited degradation on the C3 and the C4, in fact on the latter it was even less than expected.

"That explains why drivers who started on the Medium were able to extend their first stint to the halfway point of the race or even further, especially as the Virtual Safety Car made it easier for the leaders to switch to the Hard compound.

"The low tyre degradation also contributed to the many battles, especially early on when drivers were able to push as hard as they wanted. It was a different scenario to the one we witnessed in Suzuka for example, a month ago," noted the Italian.

As for the longest stints, two drivers shared the longest one on the hards, with Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg and Aston Martin's Lance Stroll completing a total of 36 laps on the same set of white-walled tyres.

As for the Medium, 29 laps was the longest stint, accomplished by both McLaren drivers and the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc who drove his first stint on the C4 and Lewis Hamilton who used it for his second stint.