The Miami Grand Prix has drawn criticism during its time on the Formula 1 calendar for the design of the track, the expensive ticket prices and every celebrity or influencer you could think of using the race for a flashy Instagram post.
But the third trip to Florida was perhaps the best on-track showing as the race was full of enough intrigue up as Max Verstappen did not clear off into the distance as expected from pole position and had, by his standards, a scrappy afternoon.
It ended with Lando Norris finally winning a grand prix, at the 110th time of asking to become the 21st Briton to win in F1 and bank the 309th win for a British driver. As an aside, it now means Lewis Hamilton has exactly one-third of all the wins for British drivers with his 103.
And there is only one place to start our round-up.
Winner – Lando Norris
McLaren brought so many upgrades to Miami, its almost worth considering the MCL38 as the MCL38B with the front-wing, front suspension, front corner, the floor, the sidepods inlets, the engine cover, cooling louvres, the rear suspension, rear corner and the beam wing all received new parts.
But Norris could not quite put everything together throughout the weekend, with a terrible sector 1 in the final part of sprint qualifying denying him what surely would have been a pole position, but instead he was vulnerable to the Turn 1 chaos from ninth on the sprint grid.
Those fears were realised when, minding his own business, he was punted off at Turn 1 in the Hamilton-Fernando Alonso-Lance Stroll melee, as he recovered later on to take fifth on the grand prix grid.
Initially shuffled down to sixth at the start, Norris’s pace and fortunes changed when Red Bull elected to pit Sergio Perez on Lap 17, providing him with the crucial free air he craved.
Once unleashed, he pumped in a series of fastest laps and began to latch onto the leading gaggle of Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
McLaren attempted the ‘Hail Mary’ of going long and hoping for a safety car – which came on Lap 28 following the Kevin Magnussen and Logan Sargeant collision.
On the restart, Norris simply bolted and left Verstappen for dust in Verstappen-esque style for a long-overdue and awaited maiden F1 win.
It was a superb performance from Norris who was simply the fastest driver on the day and managed the race beautifully.
A coming of age moment.
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Loser – Max Verstappen
Perhaps for the first time since the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix – incidentally the last time a British driver won – Red Bull did not have the fastest car in race trim.
From pole, Verstappen pulled out about a three-second gap on the chasing Piastri, but could not go any further.
By the time of the safety car, he was about 10 seconds behind Norris on-track, meaning with about a 21 second time loss, the McLaren would have rejoined about 10-11 seconds behind with about 30 laps to go.
Given the pace of the McLaren and lack of it in the Red Bull as Verstappen battled oversteer and understeer, it’s not out of the question Norris would have caught and passed him.
He claimed minor damage on the RB20, but Verstappen simply did not have Norris’s pace and took his worst finishing result of the season, in second.
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Winner – Esteban Ocon/Alpine
It has been a truly dreadful start to the season for Alpine, but hopes were renewed in China two weeks ago that the right direction was being followed as the team removed 2kg of weight from its bloated chassis.
It wasn’t quite enough to score a point in Shanghai, but in Miami, Esteban Ocon picked up 10th place to put Alpine on the board.
It is not a lot to shout home about for a team who got its car concept badly wrong at the start of the year, but Ocon did defend and hold on from the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, who finished just one second behind in a much faster package.
He was fortunate to take the 10th following Piastri’s late fall from the points, but given where Alpine has found itself and how bad things were at the start of the season, to be in position to hoover up a points finish was an outstanding job from the Frenchman.
It must also be said that Ocon was lucky to still have all four wheels pointing in the same direction after his first lap battle side-by-side with team-mate Pierre Gasly.
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Loser – Oscar Piastri
Unfortunately, this is also racing.
From the highs of Norris’ win, across the other side of the McLaren garage was Piastri, who through no fault of his own lost out on a big haul of points and left Miami with the thoughts of what might have been.
In the opening stint of the race, Piastri’s pace was outstanding, brilliantly leaping up from sixth to run third after the Turn 1 chaos and then quickly dispatching Leclerc for second.
He easily kept Verstappen honest, but was undercut back by Leclerc with his afternoon turning into a battle for fourth place with Sainz after the safety car restart.
In the decisive incident at Turn 17, Sainz went deep on the brakes, lost the rear and clattered into the front-wing of the McLaren.
It was a sizeable whack, meaning a pit-stop for a fresh wing was necessary, and given the field was still relatively bunched up after the safety car, he dropped down the order.
To give Piastri his dues, he did set the fastest lap and recover to 13th on his fresh tyres, but given the sister car took the biggest prize, it was a painful day for the Australian.
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Winner – Yuki Tsunoda
It has been said that the top five teams will usually lock out the points-paying positions if everything goes to plan, but in Miami, the lack of performance from Aston Martin opened the door for others.
Granted Fernando Alonso banked ninth, but it was not a smooth weekend for the team, with Yuki Tsunoda the prime beneficiary.
Overshadowed by Daniel Ricciardo’s fourth place in the sprint, Tsunoda bounced back with a Q3 appearance as the Australian exited in Q1 and then firmly battled with the likes of Hamilton on his way to a seventh-place finish.
He finished ahead of Russell on merit in the Mercedes and was only 10 seconds behind Hamilton in the other W15.
Between them, the other nine drivers in the bottom five teams have scored 12 points this season – six for Hulkenberg, five for Ricciardo and one for Kevin Magnussen.
By himself, Tsunoda has scored 14 and would be seventh in the standings if he himself was a team.
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Loser – Kevin Magnussen
It is hard to recall a driver who was slapped with so many penalties during a race weekend as Magnussen did in Miami.
In total, he received 65s worth of time penalties and five penalty points on his licence for his incidents across the weekend that spiralled from the sprint onwards.
He picked up 35s of those during the sprint for repeatedly going off track and gaining an advantage in a desperate bid to keep Hamilton behind to protect Hulkenberg up the road, and admitted that his driving was “stupid” was unapologetically doubled-down and said he had to do it.
In the race, leaving his nose up the inside of Sargeant was a clumsy move expected of a rookie, not a driver with 169 starts.
He picked up a further two penalty points for that, taking him to 10 for the 12 month period, and on the verge of a race ban. His next points don’t come off until March 2025.
And for good measure, he then broke an unusual rule of coming into the pits behind the safety car, and not changing the tyres. This was something the team said was its own fault, but earned Magnussen a drive-through penalty, converted to a 20-second time drop.
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