6 burning questions for F1 Miami Grand Prix

MIAMI — As another night dawns for the F1 Miami Grand Prix here at Hard Rock Stadium, the biggest question will be the same one that has gripped the sport for the past three seasons.

Can anyone catch Max Verstappen?

On Friday, he took what he described as a “terrible” car to pole position in an F1 sprint race and then went on to a commanding victory. During yesterday afternoon’s qualifying session for the Miami Grand Prix, Verstappen, like many other drivers, struggled to get his tires in the correct window under the scorching Miami sun. But it was a new pole position for the Red Bull driver, and the rest of the field wondered if, not when, they would be able to catch him.

“It was very difficult to get everything into a wrap that worked.” Verstappen said after qualifying:. “For some reason, this is very difficult to make.” [tires] Work the entire lap. Well, sometimes there are little moments here and there and it’s not very consistent, let’s put it that way. This makes trying to carve a perfect wrap very difficult. ”

At the beginning of the week it looked as if McLaren’s best bet was to catch Verstappen at the front of the field, as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both looked in good form in the first two parts of sprint qualifying. . However, they will start from the third row at the Miami Grand Prix, with Norris fifth and Piastri sixth. They will probably be able to compete in the field from there, but tire management will be very important on this day, which is expected to be another hot day.

Ferrari could be the team to watch on Sunday in terms of the threat they pose to Verstappen and Red Bull. Charles Leclerc will start alongside Verstappen at the Miami Grand Prix, but the Ferrari driver finished just 0.141 seconds behind Verstappen in qualifying. Still, tires become very important in the effort, especially at the start and entering the first clockwise corner. Because, as we’ve seen many times before, if Verstappen can get around the field at the start, it could just be a ballgame.

After finishing second in the F1 sprint race, Leclerc laid out a potential roadmap to catch Verstappen at an FIA press conference.

“Yeah, I had a pretty good start and was on the inside in Turn 1. Of course I didn’t want to take too many risks. I’ve got qualifying after this and if I crashed in the sprint it would be terrible.” I probably won’t participate after that. So I decided to end it there. We were both very slow to brake with Max but eventually he was able to maintain position and then I was pushing very hard but for the first three laps they was picking up the pace a bit more,” Leclerc outlined. “Then we experienced a similar degradation. So it’s going to be a long race tomorrow so it will be important to start as early as possible in qualifying and hopefully we can put pressure on them with our strategy. think.”

Will Leclerc rely on strategy or will he take bigger risks heading into Turn 1 later today for bigger points?

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that both teammates Verstappen and Leclerc are on the second row, with Carlos Sainz Jr. starting on the third row and Sergio Perez starting on the fourth row.

According to race pace simulation data, F1.comFerrari is the team that poses the biggest challenge for Red Bull.

But as we’ve seen many times before, every time Verstappen is pushed, he responds to the call.

Which version of Daniel Ricciardo will we see today?

The F1 sprint race here in Miami was a dream for Daniel Ricciardo.

Qualifying for today’s main event was a nightmare.

Ricciardo delivered an impressive performance in both Friday’s F1 sprint qualifying and Saturday morning’s sprint race. He qualified fourth with his Visa Cash App RB F1 Team RB01 on the second row, passing Sainz and Piastri on the final lap to finish the sprint race itself in fourth place.

“Obviously it’s very nice to be on the front line. But then it feels like we’re just holding back on what we know to be a faster car… Yeah, it’s a statement and That’s great,” Ricciardo explained to the media. SB Nation Saturday. “I’m glad that dog is inside me. A lot of people like to talk shit, so it’s nice to subtly give them a few middle fingers.”

However, in qualifying later in the day, Ricciardo, like many other drivers, struggled with the tires. The result was a Q1 loss, and adding in a three-place grid drop due to the penalty he received at the Chinese Grand Prix, the VCARB driver will start from last place.

“This afternoon was frustrating and obviously I’m not happy because it’s a big difference from what I achieved in the sprint. I was struggling from the start, sliding the rear all over the place on the softs, and to be honest today felt the same way,” Ricciardo said in the team’s post-qualifying report. “We started to slide out of Turn 1, but things got worse and worse over the remaining laps. There’s no real explanation at the moment. We feel we have a good car, but in the last run of Q1 it was just a matter of tire pressure. I think they were operating at a different level of grip.”

Still, the driver said he would keep his head down for what he called a long race.

“It’s going to be a long race tomorrow. Starting last obviously doesn’t help, but we’ll be doing a lot of laps to get through the field,” Ricciardo added. “I’ll keep my head down and give it a try!”

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto, Getty Images

Will McLaren’s upgrades catapult them to the front?

In the never-ending battle for F1 upgrades, McLaren has brought a number of F1 upgrades to South Beach. As outlined earlier this week, the team installed the front wing, front suspension, front corners, floor, side pod inlets, engine cover, rear suspension, rear corners, beam wing and cooling louvers.

Aside from strong results in SQ1 and SQ2, these upgrades did not yield the amazing results the team was looking for. As Ricciardo mentioned earlier, Norris struggled in SQ3 and only qualified for the sprint race in 9th place after topping the timesheets in both SQ1 and SQ2. The event ended early for him on Saturday when an opening lap crash cut short the sprint race.

Piastri, for his part, started the sprint race in sixth place after setting the second-best time in SQ1 behind Norris, with Ricciardo passing him and Sainz finishing the sprint race in the closing stages.

Saturday’s Miami Grand Prix qualifying session was much the same, with both drivers showing promise early on but settling for a third-row lockout once the dust settled in Q3. Norris will start today’s main event from fifth place, while Piastri will start from sixth.

The team is clearly hoping that the pace they showed on the medium compound early in sprint qualifying will tell the ultimate story of today’s Miami Grand Prix. But there are two very fast teams ahead of them: Red Bull and Ferrari.

Can Alpine break through the points?

At the beginning of the week, you could see the tension on Pierre Gasly’s face. Meeting with the media on Thursday, the Alpine driver did his best to answer all pressing questions regarding the A524, the team’s challenger for the 2024 season. Alpine has been a laggard this year as they fight every hour to provide desperately needed upgrades to improve their cars.

The nervousness that had been on Gasly’s face since Thursday was replaced by some optimism after Saturday’s qualifying session. Gasly and teammate Esteban Ocon both qualified for Q2, with Gasly set to start 12th and Ocon 13th in today’s feature race, the team’s best starting positions this season.

For Gasly, it just shows they are heading in the right direction.

“I think I can be satisfied,” Gasly told the media after qualifying. SB Nation. “And that just shows that we’re heading in the right direction. ”

Will they be able to finally get their first point of the season and make a breakthrough?

Can Mercedes find that ‘middle ground’?

Following Saturday’s qualifying session, in which George Russell qualified seventh and Lewis Hamilton eighth, Russell described the team’s current status in the W15 as being close to over-correcting to over-correcting.

“You know, the problem that Lewis and I had last year was this kind of mean rear end, and now all of a sudden we’re having trouble turning the car around in slow corners and it’s the front side.” [end] It’s kind of a washout,” Russell told the media. “So I think we’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. We need to find a middle ground between where we were last year and where we ended up now.”

Will they manage to find that middle ground today?

That’s probably unlikely given the narrow window for both Mercedes drivers to participate in the W15. Hamilton described the situation as being on a “knife edge” and said it was a difficult situation when competing against the best drivers in the world.

It may take longer than Saturday night’s debriefing to get an answer from Mercedes. I have no doubt that Russell, Hamilton and the entire team will do everything they can to get through the field. Perhaps some strategic options will give them a better chance to move forward.

But as Sunday begins, they remain a team looking for answers.

Photo provided by: Qian Jun/MB Media/Getty Images

Will Logan Sargent have the necessary drive?

Many stories unfolded in Miami over the course of the week.

But apart from the constant chatter about Adrian Newey’s future, the biggest story concerns Logan Sargent’s own future at Williams.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that the team had submitted an application to the FIA ​​for 17-year-old driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli to obtain a superlicense before he turns 18 in August. Rumor has it that the team in question was Williams, possibly hoping to slip Antonelli (who is testing for Mercedes this spring in addition to his F2 duties) into Sargent’s seat soon.

The FIA ​​has acknowledged such requests have been made, and Williams team principal James Vowles dismissed them at Friday’s FIA press conference, but F1 is a “meritocracy” and Sargent said He made it clear that he needed to earn his position.

“Let’s put it this way. I haven’t talked to Kimi since Abu Dhabi last year. I hope this gives you some context. I don’t know anything about what’s going on with Mercedes testing at the moment. Others Like everyone, we are looking at where we want to be in next year’s driver line-up and we have a young driver. [program]. In your case, I can’t judge exactly what level he is at. If he gets into the car this year, as I’ve always said from the beginning, it’s going to be a meritocracy,” Vowles said. “Logan has to win the seat. And at the moment he has some tough goals that he has to get closer to Alex. But there are no thoughts on his replacement at the moment. ”

Sargent had what he described as a “comfortable” week and despite not making it to Q2 on Saturday, the Williams driver said he was happy with his performance.

“We could have put a little more effort into the second quarter,” Sargent told the media. SB Nation, following the preliminaries. “But most importantly, we feel that the changes we made during the sprint race and qualifying are going in the right direction and that will ultimately translate into tomorrow.”

“But I’m happy with what I did today.”

The young driver also revealed that starting from Friday’s solo practice session, he feels now the most comfortable he has been all year.

“And, I mean, jumping into FP1 this weekend is the most comfortable I’ve felt all year and I feel like I just got into it,” Sargent said. And if you look at Australia and beyond, it feels like we’ve gotten almost everything from Japan and are doing relatively well.

“Of course China was disappointing. But coming here today, I feel like I’ve done a good job. I’m just looking for the other tenth, but still, just having fun and going home. We will continue to provide the best that we can.”

But can he deliver today?