Formula 1, GP Miami: Verstappen’s tour de force, Red Bull again 1: 2

Despite starting position 9, Max Verstappen was the absolute dominator at the Miami GP. The Dutch champions were first to see the checkered flag and celebrated their third win in a row. Second place went to Sergio Perez, who completed another 2-1 draw for Red Bull. Fernando Alonso completed the podium.

Verstappen followed a special strategy, started on hard tyres, passed everyone he found in front of him and was in the lead. The Dutchman dropped out until the 45th lap. Then Perez was pitted for a medium tire and found himself up front but not for long as Verstappen passed the Mexican.

How did the match go?

Verstappen’s victory was based on the perfection with which he executed his other strategy. In contrast to the first seven at the start, who were on medium tires, the Dutchman mounted the hard tires at the start. At the start, where Perez defended first place from Alonso and Sainz, Verstappen lost a place to Bottas and fell from 9th to 10th place.

However, he soon began his attack as all the riders ahead of him on the Medium tire found it wearing out quicker than they expected. This was due to the high fuel load, but also to the rougher asphalt from the morning rain that had washed away the rubber surface of the previous two days.

With nothing changing at the front, the champion managed to overtake Alonso on lap 15 and move up to 2nd place, some 3.5 inches behind his Perez counterpart. As the pit stops began and Perez did his thing, the Dutchman climbed to the front of the race – and laps 20-40 were the crucial ones that gave him the win.

Max managed to increase his distance to Perez to about 18 inches while protecting his already worn hard rubber. In fact, just before his pit stop on lap 45 he still had enough rubber to set the fastest time of the first leg and skillfully kept his wide gap on Perez, despite the Mexican having much fresher hard rubber.

After 20-25 laps of driving championship, Verstappen came out of his pit stop just 1.5 seconds behind Perez on his fresh medium tyre. And with fresher, softer tires and DRS, it was a matter of seconds to overtake Perez – despite the Mexican’s tenacious defense.

The Dutchman, who as expected also drove the fastest lap in the end on fresh rubber, extended his gap to the top of the table to 14 points on Perez.

Further down the road this year, Alonso managed a single run for his fourth podium in five races, confirming Aston Martin’s excellent tire management – ​​management Ferrari once again lacked. Because of this, despite the W14’s grip and top speed issues, Carlos Sainz couldn’t even keep George Russell’s Mercedes behind him over those three days.

Saint also received a five-second penalty for exceeding the pit speed limit during his tire change, but this had no effect on the final result as he was more than 5 minutes ahead of sixth-placed Lewis Hamilton.

The seven-time champion, using a similar strategy to Verstappen, eventually managed to pass Charles Leclerc – who was also struggling with tire management and had been pushing hard on his hard tire to climb from 13th after the pit stop.

After the Miami race, Formula 1 is now coming to Europe and after a weekend break, the 6th race of the year from May 19th to 21st in Imola, Italy will be the Emilia Romagna GP – with significant upgrades for most of the single seaters.