The Saturday in F1 Miami GP had double bonanza for Max Verstappen who not only took the sprint win, but also secured pole ahead of Ferrari pair.
It was a hectic Saturday in F1 Miami GP with the sprint in the morning hours followed by the main qualifying. But Red Bull’s Verstappen was on top in both, even though it wasn’t the cleanest of runs. The sprint was still a bit more dominating.
But the F1 qualifying saw Verstappen not improve the second time, but he was saved with the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz also not improving. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez did but could only manage fourth to make it double cars in the first two rows.
Ferrari pair are hopeful of putting up a challenge but aren’t sure of Verstappen, despite his complains. The McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were behind them with a better show, even though they set their times on the medium tyres.
The team that improved on their performance was the Mercedes pair where both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell made it in the Q3 unlike Aston Martin, where both Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso were knocked out in Q2.
Verstappen: “I think It has just been extremely difficult to put a lap in where everything just works. For some reason it’s just extremely difficult to make the tyres work around the whole lap. Yeah, sometimes you have little moments here and there and it’s just not very consistent, let’s say it like that. And that makes it very difficult to, let’s say, try and hit a perfect lap. So every lap that you put on the board was a bit of guessing what was going to happen, which doesn’t make it very nice to drive. But I think we handled the situation well. We did the best we could and the car definitely felt a little bit nicer compared to yesterday. It’s just super unpredictable. It’s quite frustrating. I mean, it’s not really fun to drive like that. But, yeah, I can’t tell you what went wrong because I did the same thing and then you come out of corners and you suddenly lose one tenth or whatever. I’m like, ‘alright? It’s just a bit less grip’. It’s just, you know, some qualifyings you go in saying ‘OK, I can improve here and there’.
“You know, the tyres are quite consistent and you can just push. Here it just feels like you have no idea really, like, what you’re going to get. And that makes it really difficult. And yeah, I mean, my first sector was a little bit better, but then the middle sector, it just fell away from me again for whatever reason. And then I think I was quite equal into the last corner. So I just tried to brake a bit later, like a tiny front lock. And then you miss the momentum out of the corner. Yeah, that’s what it is. Honestly, the only thing that we can control is within ourselves. So that’s what we’ll focus on. As long as I’m happy with my balance in the race, I think we’ll be alright. Yeah, it just needs to be a bit better than what we had today in the race. I think if we can achieve something like that, that we’re in a bit of a happier window, then I’m sure we’ll be quick.”
Leclerc: “Happy. I mean, I didn’t change much of it since this morning. A little bit of fine-tuning, but all in all, we were quite in a good place. However, as Max said, it’s extremely tricky to put a lap together. Tyres, especially in the second sector, are very inconsistent. And there are quite a few corners where you don’t really know what you’re going to get. And that makes it very, very difficult. So it was a very tricky qualifying. But second is not a bad place to start the race. It’s a little bit of track characteristics. I think there are still things that are a little bit not understood yet. As in China, we were struggling mostly with the low-speed and here there are quite a few low-speed corners, but we seem to be stronger.
“So we’ll look into it and try to understand, but we’ve got two very good examples and I’m sure that we’ll manage to have conclusions very soon. Just the Sprint race we were a little bit closer to what uh to what we normally see. However I also said that Max wasn’t really happy with his car this morning in the Sprint race. So we need to see how much of a step forward he does tomorrow, being happier with the car. But as I said, we did some fine tuning on our side. We’re also confident we did a step forward. so we’ll see. But if we have a similar pace like we’ve seen this morning then I think with strategy you can always put a bit more a bit more pressure. And I hope that is the case. We’ve got the two cars in the front, so it’s a good opportunity.”
Sainz: “Not bad. I made some progress compared to yesterday. And I had a better feeling with the car, which allowed me to push the limits a bit better. At the same time, same as these guys, you know, it was a bit of a lottery out there, putting a lap together was extremely difficult. You always end the lap feeling like you could have gone two or three tenths quicker if you clean it up, But you never actually get to clean it up because next lap you always do a small mistake here and there and you leave another two tenths. And also I think we all are left with the same frustrating kind of feeling, that it’s extremely difficult to put a lap together. Overall, I think tight margins, good progress and a good position to start tomorrow. No. Unfortunately, no. I think it’s a matter of a trade, you know, that you choose between downforce, power unit settings, etc.
“I think Daniel and Honda this weekend, they seem to have a lot of acceleration out of the low-speed corners and this was allowing them to be a very tough car to overtake. You could see that Checo on the Honda power unit managed to more or less make it stick. Obviously, they are also a bit more friendly to the Red Bulls than they are to the Ferraris because of obvious reasons. But apart from that, yeah, it was honestly very tricky. The only thing missing there was the mistake yesterday in the Sprint quali that made me start behind Daniel in the race. And when you put the compromises for set-up you don’t expect to start behind an RB. So tomorrow we’re starting in a more of a normal place and we’ll fight people with similar downforce levels to us and similar top speed levels. And yeah, this move should make it better.”
Hamilton: “I thought the first two qualifying [segments] were generally better. Q2 was… the car felt mega in Q2 all of a sudden, and then got to Q3 and it disappeared again. It’s the first time it’s really worked in Q2 this year I would say. We don’t know. We really, really don’t know and I couldn’t tell you, honestly.”
Alonso: “We seem to [be] struggling a lot today compared to yesterday – we were P7 and P8 in yesterday’s qualifying and we are out of Q3. In my case, quite poor performance [in] Q2, P15. I could not improve that much. We made some set-up changes also from the session this morning to now – looking at the times, I would say that didn’t work as expected. But, yeah, this is a Sprint weekend and it’s tough. Within two tenths you can be P8 or P15, we are in the back side of that group. We’ve been in the good side of that group a few times already this year, like in China we were P3, only one tenth off P9, something like that. So yeah, let’s take it, let’s learn some things tomorrow in the race and we’ll see. I think it’s going to be very difficult to score points in my case. I think Lance hopefully has a better chance starting P11, already close to the points, but for me I think learning a few things in race-pace will be the main priority.”
Norris: “I think it’s been a reasonable Qualifying. I probably couldn’t have asked for a lot more. The team did a great job to get the car back together after the Sprint, first of all, so thank you to them after the unfortunate incident we were involved in this morning. Otherwise, P5 and P6 is good for us as a team. I think that’s where we deserve to be and that’s all we had in the car today, so we maximised it and we’ll try to get a good amount of points tomorrow.”
After a solid run in the sprint qualifying and race, Visa Cash App RB’s Daniel Ricciardo had a terrible qualifying to be knocked out in Q1 itself while suffering from lack of grip. His teammate Yuki Tsunoda, though, made it inside the Top 10.
He brought along Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg who maintained his consistency after a Top 10 in sprint qualifying and race, whereas Kevin Magnussen had traffic which knocked him out in Q1. Williams’ Alexander Albon found himself in Q2 after sprint troubles.
But Logan Sargeant didn’t make it despite giving his all. While the Alpine pair of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly felt good with their run, the Stake F1 Team pair of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu had a tough run after being knocked out in Q1.
Ricciardo: “It’s one of those things, you know… it can change so quickly. I think, honestly, I saw Lando lap in SQ3 yesterday, where straightaway from the start of the lap you could see he was sliding his rears everywhere on the soft [tyres], where he obviously struggled a lot, and I honestly felt the same. Already on that last set [of tyres] coming out of Turn 1 I started sliding, had a wobble into Turn 7, then went wide and it was a spiral effect. What was strange is it started already at the start of the lap, so it’s one of those things with this sport where it treats you nice until it doesn’t. We’ll look into it, but everything seemed fine approaching the lap, so it’s one of those things. We simply didn’t have the grip on that second set – simple as that. I genuinely think we’re not an 18th-place car and it was just… hopefully we understand why sometimes the tyres behave as they do.
“I chatted a little bit to Lando yesterday, we didn’t go into detail, but I just said, ‘It looked like you were on used hard tyres on your Q3 run’, as it was clear as day how bad it looked. Hopefully we can maybe get an answer on that. We’re quicker than obviously what we showed, so we’ll just see what tomorrow brings. We have the penalty, so I think we’re dead last, so a contrast to this morning. Obviously I’m not happy, but it’s also one of those things… this morning I told the team let’s at least enjoy this for the next 30 minutes because this sport is highly unpredictable.”
Hulkenberg: “We had track position straight away, and that was really key for us today in the Sprint. I had the inside line into Turn 1 and managed to avoid problems. The group ahead of me was a bit faster, but towards the end once the race settled, we were pretty okay. In qualifying it was really tricky to string the perfect lap together, it’s a challenging track with the hot temperatures and the tyre getting hotter over the lap. Overall, it’s been a very positive Saturday, getting two points today, and they come at a premium for us and it’s quite nice to have them already. Of course, we’re going to push for more points tomorrow – it’s going to be a tight fight with the RB’s and everyone else behind us for sure.”
Gasly: “There are plenty of positives and learnings to take as a team today. The upgrades we have on the car are clearly working in line with our expectations. In the Sprint, we finished in ninth place, which is the closest we have been to the points all season. Then, in Qualifying, we finished just one tenth from reaching Q3. We know where we are lacking and we have to try and improve these areas as the gaps in and around the top ten are so small. I had a very good feeling on my Q1 lap but then it felt different in Q2 so there are things to analyse and further understand. It does feel like progress and I’m aiming for the first points of the year in tomorrow’s race.”
Albon: “Today was more about tyres than anything else. Even just now in my Qualifying laps, I’m having to do a lot of race management with the tyres and it’s like the quicker you drive the slower you end. The hot track temperatures seem to hurt us a little more when running lower downforce for better straight-line speed, so by turn 11, the tyres are gone. I locked up on the corner when the front tyres went off, and then the rears will go off the next corner, so it’s just a bit tricky. Let’s see what we can do from P14 tomorrow.”
Bottas: “Nothing much happened to us during the Sprint this morning; I got stuck in a train right after the start, and that didn’t leave too much room to make progress throughout the laps. We used the Sprint to maximise our learnings in terms of setup, to come prepared for qualifying and the race. The resulting setup change made a difference, and the car definitely felt much better this afternoon. We had a clean first run, but then unfortunately got unlucky once again with some traffic on the second run. Still, we made a decent improvement through the weekend so far and got really close to the Q2 threshold – only missing out on it by just one hundredth. All in all, we still have a lot to play for tomorrow; our pace was decent today, and I’m positive that with a strong start and a good strategy, we can put ourselves in the battle for points.”
Here’s how F1 Miami GP qualifying panned out
Here’s how F1 Miami GP sprint panned out
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