Luke’s Weekend Review – Miami GP 2023

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Verstappen charges through the field to finish 1st at Miami GP, Sainz penalized for pit lane speeding

Miami GP 2023 review 2

Round 5 of the F1 2023 season is over and we have had a rare occurrence in the Miami GP where we had all 20 drivers finish the race with practically no incidents whatsoever. With the rain on Sunday morning, I for one did not expect this as the rain managed to wash away any grip that was built up over the weekend essentially turning the track back in a green state.

At lights out all drivers managed to get away cleanly apart from Nyck De Vries where he locked his brakes into turn 1 and hit the back of Lando Norris pushing Norris wide. Luckily both drivers got away unscaped. We see Logan Sargeant pit early in the race due to wing damage that he picked up from the start on lap 3.

Max Verstappen didn’t have the start he wanted dropping 1 place on the start due to him gambling on a different strategy than the cars ahead of him taking the hards as his starting tyre. That said, it didn’t take Verstappen long before he found the grip in those hards and started making his way up the field. At the end of lap 3 we see Max doing one of the best overtakes of the race where he was catching up to Kevin Magnussen and Charles Leclerc fighting for P4 and on the Start/Finish straight Max saw the opportunity and overtook the pair in one move. Fernando Alonso in an interview on Saturday he predicted that he will see Max Verstappen in his wing mirrors at around lap 25, unfortunately for Alonso he was wrong and Max had caught up to him by lap 14 and breezed passed him on lap 15 putting Max in 2nd place behind his teammate Sergio Perez.

Charles Leclerc probably would want to put this race behind him as quick as possible after a race where he struggled a lot with pace fighting the Haas of Kevin Magnussen and unable to overtake him for nearly the entire race. Leclerc’s race came alive more on the mediums however this was still not quick enough for him to keep the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton behind him in the closing stages of the race where we saw Leclerc finish his race in the same spot he started back in 7th place.

Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari seems to have had a better race than Leclerc where we saw Sainz finish in 5th place. Sainz was the only driver in the Miami GP who received a penalty in the whole race, this was due to Sainz speeding in the pit lane where he came in all guns blazing trying to come out in front of Alex Albon. Unfortunately, Sainz still came out behind Albon after the pits and bagged him the 5 second penalty which hindered his chances for a better spot in the race.

Analysis of the Miami Grand Prix: Verstappen, Mercedes, and Alonso's Performance

The pitstops window came earlier than expected for those drivers who were on the mediums as they were not coping well with the lack of grip and the heat on track on lap 16 where we saw drivers coming in to switch to the hards which was the preferred race tyre this weekend and trying to undercut the drivers ahead. Sergio Perez had a clean start and was very unbothered in the first stage of the Miami GP where he was racing his won race but that shortly ended when Verstappen caught up at around lap 18 where Max closed the gap to about 1.7 seconds. Perez’s side of the garage at Red Bull decided to bring Perez in on lap 20 so they won’t help Max any further with DRS boost. Max took the lead into lap 21 where he put his head down and went away with the race. We see Perez have a great opening stint on the hards but around lap 38 Max’s engineer Gianpiero Lambiase gave Verstappen the green light to push and lean on the hards as much as he could. Verstappen then started to put in some mega laps on the hard tyres he started the race on and by lap 45 he managed to pull a lead of about 18.7 seconds on his teammate Sergio Perez. Max Verstappen comes into the pits on lap 45 which gave Perez back the lead of the race. Unfortunately for Perez, Max didn’t take long to catch back up on the mediums and after a nice battle on lap 48, Max retook the lead to go win the Miami GP for the 2nd time. Last time someone won a race from 9th place was back in 1984 when Niki Lauda took the top step of the Podium in Dijon France.

Mercedes had a decent race themselves where we saw George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finish in 4th and 6th after they started the race in 6th and 13th respectively. Both Mercedes drivers pulled some amazing overtakes and worked together by making a switch on lap 33 to let Russell get past due to them being on a different strategy. Lewis Hamilton was complaining a bit in the start of the race as he also opted to start on the hards, but it all came together for him in the end pulling a nice move on Leclerc on Lap 55 securing his 6th place finish. Pace is way better for Mercedes since the start of the season, but they still don’t have an answer for Aston Martin and Red Bull.

Mclaren are still on the struggle bus themselves not able to find any pace on their F1 car this season, they brought new upgrades with them to this race which both drivers confirmed they made the car better to drive but not has improved much on the pace. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri finished their race in Miami in 17th and 19th respectively which I’m hoping to see the Orange Papaya team further up the grid come the next race in Imola which is a race that Lando Norris enjoys.

Fernando Alonso was back on the podium this weekend making that 4 podiums out of 5 races so far this season which is an incredible run for the 2-time world champion and oldest driver on the grid. Alonso also keeps surprising us every race week with how different he is than the old Alonso we all know. Towards then end of the race we hear Alonso coming on the radio asking what position his teammate Lance Stroll was in and saying what a good move that was into turn 1. It left us all in shock as to how Alonso knew about this but in the post-race interview, he admitted that the race for him was fairly lonely and coming out of turn 11 there is a big screen where he saw Lance pull an overtake on Valtteri Bottas into turn 1. Both Red Bull drivers where joking calling Alonso a coach to Stroll after we also heard Alonso coming on the radio in Baku telling his engineer to share the brake balance information to Lance Stroll.

Who do you think was the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Miami GP? We now head into a week off from racing and then we will head into the first triple header of the season starting in Imola GP.

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