Sunday’s inaugural Miami Grand Prix Formula One race in Miami Gardens, Fla., lived up to its billing as a heavyweight battle between the series’ two points leaders – Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Verstappen won for the 2021 F1 drivers’ champion, his second consecutive and third victory of the year. His earlier victories were in Saudi Arabia and Italy.
Leclerc, who led the championship by 27 points early on Sunday, won the season-opener in Bahrain and Race 3 in Australia. He finished second on Sunday, 3.7 seconds behind Verstappen.
Carlos Sainz finished third in his Ferrari while Sergio Pérez finished fourth for Red Bull.
In the fifth Mercedes was George Russell. He was followed by teammate and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
“It was an incredible grand prize,” Verstappen said. “Very physical too. I think we kept it exciting until the end. It was an incredible Sunday for us.”
Verstappen started the race with teammate Perez in the second row, behind pole-seaters Leclerc and Sainz’s Ferraris.
But the Dutch-Belgian Red Bull driver passed Sainz just after the standings start. He then tracked down Leclerc, caught him on lap 8 and passed the Monaco driver on the first turn of lap 9.
When the Ferrari driver stood on lap 25, Verstappen took a 4.6-second lead over Leclerc. The stop was slow. Verstappen held a lap later and responded with a quick stop. With the stop completed, Verstappen’s lead was extended by more than 7 seconds.
On lap 41 of 57, Pierre Gasly in an AlphaTauri and Lando Norris in his McLaren approached to fetch a safety car. The accident sent some teams to dig a pit and move to various tire compounds.
Verstappen, Leclerc, Sanz and Perez stayed out, but suddenly the sequence was tightly packed in front of the field when the safety car retired on lap 47 of 57.
Leclerc kept the pressure on Verstappen for the next seven laps until Verstappen pulled away from the last three laps.
“In the end I thought I could get Max at one point, but today he had the advantage in terms of pace,” Leclerc said.
The race was held on a purpose-built, 19-turn, 3.36-mile street circuit around Hard Rock Stadium where the NFL’s Miami Dolphins play. The circuit did not receive much love from the drivers before the race as the surface proved to be extremely slippery on sections that were not rubberized, leading to one-groove racing. Racing turned out better than predicted.
Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel’s two Aston Martin cars started the race from the pits. It turned out that his fuel was too cold and he opted to start from the pits to avoid a penalty. They had qualified 10th and 13th respectively, and started last and second to last.
The only US-based team, Haas F1 Racing, had a great day. Mick Schumacher was on the verge of collecting his first points, but moving into ninth place, he made contact with Vettel and slipped to 15th. Kevin Magnussen finished 16th for Haas.