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Lando Norris
secured his maiden Formula 1 win in today’s third edition of the Miami Grand
Prix. In Shanghai a fortnight ago, the McLaren driver secured his 15th
podium finish without a win, which was an outright record and today that
jinx came to an end. Norris thus becomes the 114th driver to have won at
least one Grand Prix and for McLaren it was win number 184, the first since
Monza 2021, when Daniel Ricciardo led home team-mate Norris to make it a
one-two finish.
Also on the podium were Max Verstappen second for Red
Bull and Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari, while for the first time this
season an Alpine finished in the points, courtesy of a tenth place finish
for Esteban Ocon. It’s worth noting that, in all three editions of this
race, the driver who started from pole took the chequered flag in second
place: in 2022 it was Leclerc, last year Perez and this time Verstappen.
THE DAY ON
TRACK:
As easily predicted, the one stop strategy was the only plausible one, but
first the Virtual Safety Car on lap 22 and then the real one on lap 28
obviously upset the plans, giving those who had not yet pitted the chance to
do so while losing significantly less time than those who had already
changed tyres. This reshuffled the pack and then the order remained
relatively static in the early stages after the restart, at least among the
leaders.
On the starting grid, the most popular compound was the C3
with 15 drivers going for what, on paper was the quickest strategy, namely a
first stint on the Medium and a second on the Hard. Hamilton, Alonso,
Ricciardo and Magnussen opted for the C2, hoping to run as long a first
stint as possible, while Bottas gambled on the C4.
A total of 1110
laps were completed with only Sargeant (Williams) failing to finish the
race. The C3 did the most work (562 laps, 50.6%) with a slightly higher
mileage than the C2 (504 laps, 45.4%). The C4 was only used by the two
Sauber drivers, by Bottas for the first 11 laps and by Zhou from his pit
stop to the chequered flag and it proved to be up to the task both in terms
of degradation and performance.
Apart from the sight of a brand new
Formula 1 race winner on the podium in the shape of Lando Norris, there was
also a novelty when it came to the Podium Cap which Pirelli provides to the
top three finishers in the Grand Prix, as well as the representative of the
winning team, who today was McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella. For the
Miami event, Formula 1’s Global Tyre Partner prepared a special cap in
turquoise, a colour suggesting the waters in front of the city’s beaches,
along with stylised palm trees on the peak, an emblematic element of Miami,
alongside the flag of the United States of America.
MARIO ISOLA - MOTORSPORT DIRECTOR
“First of all, I want to congratulate Lando Norris on his first Formula 1
win. I am sure he will never forget the emotions he felt in the final
kilometres and then on the podium!
Strangely, despite the surprises
thrown up by the Safety Cars, first the virtual and then the real one, it
was a very linear race in terms of tyre behaviour: just the one stop and
tyres that, whatever the colour of their band, degraded relatively little,
partly due to the absence of graining and there was also very little in the
way of a performance difference between the cars.
That said, we saw
that the two compounds most used, the C2 and C3, allowed the drivers to push
flat out for almost the entire race, as can be seen from studying the
chronology of the lap times, which made for a very interesting race, even if
on paper it seemed to be constrained by strategy. Obviously, the VSC and SC
ruined the plans on several pit walls, while others were luckier or
cleverer, but that’s all part of racing.
As always, it will be
important to analyse carefully all the data acquired over the three days of
this Grand Prix, because they will produce indications that could be useful
for us in terms of compound selection and when it comes to understanding the
interaction between the tyres and the various types of track surface. In
fact, that’s why Formula 1 is a fascinating sport because every day you can
learn something that can lead to progress."
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