Formula 1 ®
Max wins the Miami Sprint race whilst the FIA stewards go on a penalty fest! Max takes pole position for the Grand Prix ahead of Leclerc and Sainz. Fernando is outqualified by his team mate Lance Stroll.
Max headed into the final runs in the Sunshine State holding a 0.141-sec advantage over Charles but none of the major players improved, paving the way for the Dutch driver to take top spot.
Leclerc will join Max on the front row with Carlos third in the other scarlet machine. Sergio Perez took fourth spot, ahead of Lando, who was fifth for McLaren.
George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified seventh and eighth respectively for Mercedes.
Russell urged Hamilton to “hurry up” as he prepared for his last go, ultimately lapping four hundredths quicker than his team-mate to take a 5-1 lead in qualifying this season.
For Verstappen, he could now match Senna’s mark in Imola – the venue which claimed the great Brazilian’s life three decades ago – in a fortnight’s time.
Max
“The car felt better after the changes that we made, but we have found that there were quite a few combining factors that make it very tricky to drive around this track. It has been difficult over the weekend with the tyres, as they have quite low grip, overheat quickly and we have also struggled with the balance of the car. It has just been quite unpredictable, and everyone has found that it has been difficult to put a lap in. Despite this, ultimately the most important thing is that we put it on pole and that this is seven poles in a row, which is something to be proud of. We have the changes in place to make it more of a straightforward race tomorrow and it was good to get the win in the Sprint race earlier today too. Once the tyres stabilise in the race when they are hot, it will feel a bit more normal to drive. The strategy will be a bit simpler tomorrow, so hopefully that will bring my tyre degradation down too. We will see what the race brings.”
Checo
“It was a very tricky session, it was all too much with the grip, it was too hot and too on the limit. We didn’t maximise the potential, I think we could have had a shot at pole but I made a mistake on my final lap at turn eight, which probably lost me the front row. Unfortunately, I am on the wrong side of the tenth today, but we go again tomorrow. We will analyse our session because we were fast and we had more than we showed. Other than that, I think everyone had the same struggles today, some laps I was struggling to match myself from Q1. It will be a very demanding race and quite a challenge in the heat but the pace is there and anything can happen. Hopefully the changes we made to the car today from the Sprint will translate into race pace.”
Christian
“Overall, a fantastic showing from the Team today with the Sprint race and qualifying here in Miami. We’re always trying to extract the maximum out of our car, and everyone was struggling a bit out there today to find the right balance and set-up on the last run. Max obviously found enough and was able to make it his seventh pole in a row, his sixth of the season, and it was another phenomenal performance from him. Checo put in a really, really strong performance and improved on his second run to put it on the second row, so we’re going into race day in a good position. The Sprint race today gives us a nice window into what the tyres are going to do tomorrow, but we’ll see how it plays out with set-up and conditions on race day.”
Alonso’s sprint race effectively ended in the opening hundred metres following a coming together with Hamilton.
The double world champion accused Hamilton of ruining his race and then claimed the Mercedes driver escaped punishment from the stewards “because he isn’t Spanish”.
Alonso’s mood will not have been improved by a poor qualifying session which leaves him 15th on the grid and four places behind team-mate Lance Stroll.
Daniel Ricciardo delivered the best drive of his comeback to take fourth in the sprint race. But the Australian was brought crashing down to earth in qualifying after he failed to make it out of Q1.
Fernando
QUALIFYING P15
“It was a disappointing day for us. Firstly, there was the incident into Turn 1 at the start of the Sprint and then we had a difficult Qualifying session for tomorrow’s race. We struggled in Q1 and Q2 and finished in P15 in both sessions. I didn’t seem to have much pace and we were just outside of that group fighting for the top ten this time around. We made some set-up changes from the Sprint race to now and it seems these changes didn’t work. I think it will be a challenging race tomorrow, but we’ll analyse our performance tonight and try to recover some points.”
