The McLaren stable was untouchable this weekend at the Miami GP with the victories of Lando Norris on Saturday during the Sprint and Oscar Piastri race on Sunday during the Grand Prix, thus confirming its current superiority in Formula 1.
A year after his return to the front of the stage on the Floridian layout where the Briton had won the first GP of his career, the Woking -based team (England) crushed the competition and escaped a little more in the manufacturers’ ranking.
Piastri, who has garnered his third consecutive victory, the fourth of the season after China, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, has increased his lead at the head of the championship on Norris, bringing it to 16 lengths, and is increasingly posing in favorite for the world crown.
The Australian, who left third Sunday, took advantage of the fight between his teammate and Max Verstappen (Red Bull) in the first two turns to seize second place. Despite a good resistance of the reigning quadruple world champion, the native of Melbourne made the superiority of his car speak to take the lead in the 14th round and never leave it again.
Tensions within the Ferrari stable
“I won the race that I really wanted to win. The qualifications were difficult yesterday (Saturday) so ending with a success today (Sunday) is great. At the first turn I stayed at a good distance from Max (Verstappen) and then I had a nice advantage in terms of rhythm. The car was incredible today, “said the Australian.
Relegated to sixth row, Norris also took advantage of the velocity of his car to quickly go up to the classification. At the end of a bitter duel, the Englishman then took his revenge on Verstappen, who had closed the door to him in a muscular way at the start of the race.
“Mad Max”, fourth behind the British George Russell (Mercedes) on Sunday, was the big loser of the weekend since he had not scored any point on Saturday during the sprint and conceded it again on Sunday. However, he will console himself with the birth of his first child, a little girl named Lily who was born just before the Floridian weekend.
One of the striking facts of the race was the tension that broke out in the Ferrari stable. The seven -time world champion Lewis Hamilton has indeed criticized his team’s strategy on the radio when he believed that he was the fastest of the two Scuderia pilots. “It’s not a good teamwork, that’s all I have to say,” he said to his race engineer.
Frustrating race for the French
If his teammate Charles Leclerc finally let him pass, the Briton had to resolve to give him the same laps later because he was driving less quickly than the Monegasque. The two men finally finished seventh and eighth, about a minute from McLaren.
The Williams, on the other hand, experienced a very good race since the Thai Alexander Albon finished an unexpected fifth place, while the Spaniard Carlos Sainz finished ninth after having led his life to Ferrari, his former stable, until the last race turn where he almost doubled Hamilton.
On the French side, the race was frustrating. The rookie Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) failed only two tenths from the tenth place of the Japanese Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull), penalized of five seconds for speeding in the channel of the stands but which is still managed to tear the last point into play.
The other two French people, Esteban Ocon (Haas) and Pierre Gasly (Alpine), could not do better than 12th and 13th.
During the next Grand Prix in Imola (Italy) in two weeks, Gasly could have a new teammate since the Australian Jack Doohan, still forced to abandon Sunday and who has not scored the slightest point in six races this season, should be ousted for the benefit of Argentinian Franco Colapinto, one of the reserve pilots of the Franco-British team.
