Miami GP - Verstappen wins starting from ninth position, Perez beaten from pole

Predicting a race win for Max Verstappen, with the Dutch driver starting from ninth position was certainly a gamble, considering that his teammate Sergio Perez - with the same car - started on pole position... But after the 57 laps in Miami, in a race that surprisingly lacked Safety Car or other neutralizations, that's exactly what happened!

Let's analyze everything that happened in the Miami GP, whose final classification is the following:

🏁 CLASSIFICATION (LAP 57/57) 🏁

How we crossed the line in Miami Gardens 🌴#MiamiGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/vdEBuVIH3h

— Formula 1 (@F1) May 7, 2023

As mentioned, the Miami race had a linear plot, and the final results show the real performance of each driver-vehicle package. The race was for almost everyone on a single pit stop, with some notable variations from the Medium - Hard strategy recommended by Pirelli before the GP.

Race strategies used in the Miami GP

In fact Verstappen, like 6 other drivers including Hamilton, started on Hard tyres. With those, he completed a very long stint (an extremely competitive one, but we'll come back to this aspect later), to then fit the Mediums in the last 12 laps of the race. Meanwhile, Perez, Alonso, Russell and the two Ferraris used the above mentioned strategy, without doing anything too creative or risky.

In general, the compound rejected by everyone was the Soft, used at the start only by the McLarens of Norris and Piastri but soon rejected with an early pit stop as soon as lap 5: this was a useful figure for the other teams, who avoided the not so durable red-banded Pirelli tyres in view of even short final stints.

Aston Martin again in great shape with Alonso behind the wheel

The last two races, as widely discussed here on Race Analysis, had been marked by conservative pace, so it was difficult to understand the form of the teams behind Red Bull.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Yesterday, however, it became clear that Aston Martin, at least in the hands of Alonso, is a car that has in its tyre management a lethal weapon. As in the inaugural GP in Bahrain, Fernando's race was a crescendo of performance: at the start, on Medium tyres, he couldn't get pull away from Sainz; but once they switched to Hards, he exhibited a completely different pace from the driver born in Madrid, which in the meantime was also overtaken by Russell. From then on, the Aston Martin driver found himself in no man's land: too far from the two Red Bulls in front, and with a good gap on George's Mercedes behind. With these premises, it is obvious that he limited himself to managing the car to bring home another podium, the fourth in five races. If anyone ever thought of a Fernando without the grit of his good old days, just look at the way he's tackling this 2023 to get a measure of his talent.

“We have a great car. The race today was lonely. We didn't have much to do with the Red Bulls. We expected stronger opponents today, but Ferrari performed worse than expected. Now let's take this podium and go towards the Imola, Monaco, Barcelona hat-trick, hoping to continue like this. Attacking Red Bull? After four podiums I want something more. At least a second place, but the two Red Bulls are always unstoppable. Maybe in Monaco or Barcelona we can have a chance, let's see"

Fernando Alonso

As the Spanish driver himself often admits, the only factor that separates him from race win number 33 in his career is called Red Bull... As anticipated, the first two steps of the podium are occupied (again for the fourth time in five races!) by the two drivers of the Anglo-Austrian team, for which the adjectives to describe their supremacy are honestly starting to run out.

How did Max beat Checo after starting 8 positions behind him?

What is surprising, however, is the fact that it was Verstappen who won and not Perez, who started with the advantage of pole position. How was this possible?

The reason lies in the quality of the stint performed by Max on the Hard tyres with which he started... The World Champion covered no less than 45 of the 57 scheduled laps, during which he easily got rid of all the opponents ahead of him on the grid. Halfway through the race, the classification saw him in the lead ahead of teammate Perez, who however had already made his pit stop to switch from Mediums to Hards: everyone (including me) would have expected to see Checo closing the gap over Max thanks to fresher tyres, but surprisingly that was not the case.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

And when it was Max who went into the pits, exiting behind Checo by 1.4 seconds, it took him just over a lap to catch him and overtake him in the braking point of Turn 1. Checo tried to resist with a powerful but well-calibrated braking, but there was simply nothing he could do against Verstappen...

“Nice race, I stayed out of trouble at the start and then had a clean race. I was able to start the comeback from lap 1 and was out for a long time on the Hard tyres. That made all the difference today. Then I had a short but good fight with Checo at the end. The duel was very clean and that's the most important thing today. I'm very happy, winning starting from ninth place is always very satisfying. Different strategy? We talked about it yesterday. We didn't know what the weather would be like, but we were sure this strategy would pay off. Luckily that was the case."

Max Verstappen

The Mexican driver attributed his poor performance in the race to problems with the Medium tyres fitted during the first stint, which - in my opinion - does not detract from the performance exhibited on the other side of the garage.

."I think that initially the Medium tyres were really poor, worse than expected: the first stint was really bad with the graining we had... This compromised a lot our race, because we didn't have a big difference in tyres. Honestly I think Max also had incredible pace on the Hards and I think I need to analyze what went wrong today, because we just didn't have the pace"

Sergio Perez

If the podium sees three drivers all in all satisfied, the same cannot be said for the ones in the positions immediately following. Mercedes and Ferrari continue - with mixed fortunes - their personal battle.

A Grand Prix where the true race pace emerged: not good news for Ferrari...

To better understand the performance level we were talking about, the race pace plot of the best classified of the four top teams will help us:

• Verstappen (P1) for Red Bull;
• Alonso (P3) for Aston Martin;
• Russell (P4) for Mercedes;
• Sainz (P5) for Ferrari;

Analysis of the race pace of Verstappen, Alonso, Russell and Sainz during the Miami GP

The first thing that catches the eye - leaving aside the fact that the RB19 seems to compete in a different category than Formula 1 - is that the pace held by Sainz on the Mediums was much more competitive than that on the Hards, with a slow final stint. If we think about it, this finding goes against the trend of what we saw in Baku, where in the final part of the race Leclerc managed to keep the podium lapping very fast. What has changed?

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The first - and most important - differentiating factor between the Australian and Azerbaijan GPs compared to yesterday's one in Miami was precisely the pace set in the race, in which no one found themselves managing their performance in order to avoid an additional pit stop. Although I realize this is a simplification, it could be said that when the going gets tough, the Ferrari SF-23 is left with no weapons to compete with the rivals of Aston Martin and Mercedes.

Sainz expresses very well the difficult moment of the Prancing Horse team:

“Difficult race, really difficult. I was a bit surprised by how much we struggled on the Hard tyres after a great stint on the Mediums… We tried the undercut on Fernando, which obviously worked, but meant that by pushing the tyres three or four laps, our car had zero flexibility in how much it could push or not. I had to stay under the limit for the rest of the race if I wanted to finish. Considering the wind and our struggle with tyre management, the stint on the Hards became too long for us. Pushing against Fernando in the first stint and then being 20 seconds behind him in the second stint is hard to accept, and it shows that we have a lot of work to do"

Carlos Sainz

Leclerc's race was even worse, because he had to add neck problems to the problems with his car and the seventh starting position that made his Sunday even more critical.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Incredible to think how his Grand Prix was a constant battle with Magnussen's Haas, a car which under normal conditions should run more than a second per lap slower than the SF-23, and which instead made the Ferrari driver's 57 laps a nightmare...

"We really have a lot of work to do, because we have a car that when you're in ideal conditions gives a quite good feeling, but as soon as you go out the window a little it's very difficult to drive... With the Mediums at the start of the race, I wasn't able to rotate the car, really zero. I had to be careful to avoid front tyres slidings, because I knew that the first stint would be long, and this conditioned me a lot for the rest of the race. I was better with the Hard tyres, but we have to work hard to have a more consistent car, especially in the race. When in qualifying you get to battle for the top positions, and then in the race you just have to accept that you can only let other drivers by, well it's a difficult mentality to accept. We won't give up anything, and I hope that the updates we will bring to Imola will be enough to carry us forward, and with a good qualifying it will show, especially on a track where it is difficult to overtake. In any case, the priority is to improve the race pace"

Charles Leclerc

Mercedes, what a leap in performance between the qualifying and the race!

The rationale about the race pace held by Ferrari is hand in glove with the performance offered in the race by the two Mercedes W14s. Let's not forget that the starting positions (P6 for Russell and P13 for Hamilton) were the result of a really disappointing qualifying, which would have gone even worse if George hadn't narrowly saved himself from elimination in Q2 - where Albon on the his Williams placed himself within half a tenth of a second of him...

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

With these premises, Russell's fourth place and Hamilton's sixth at the finish line are certainly worth as much as a victory for the team from Brackley, which while awaiting the developments for Imola continues to put on the track a car without aerodynamic updates, but which optimizes every race like few other teams can do.

And this has positive repercussions on the Championship standings, where Mercedes occupies the third position in the Constructors' World Championship just 6 points behind Aston Martin... If the "B-spec" that the Brackley-based engineers are preparing for Imola were to prove a decisive step forward, for the team of Alonso and Stroll it will be difficult to maintain the narrow margin they have at the moment.

Teams projected at Imola: the "European season" starts in two weeks

The event from 19 to 21 May at the Autodromo Enzo and Dino Ferrari in Imola marks the beginning of the so-called European Formula 1 season. Nothing official, but having so many races on European soil (and therefore close to the team headquarters) will allow everyone to bring more updates in their single-seaters, by virtue of fewer logistical difficulties.

Now there are two weeks to gather ideas, analyze the results of the first 5 Grands Prix and get back on track stronger than before.

Until next time!