McLaren’s Norris earns maiden win in Miami with brilliant drive & a little luck; Verstappen relegated to rare P2 in fair fight, Leclerc P3 for Ferrari

McLaren’s Lando Norris drove the race of his life at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday, using his ever improving skills as a driver, the new upgrades on his MCL38 chassis and little bit of Safety Car luck to earn his maiden win in Formula 1 in spectacular fashion. Having knocked on the door with seven podiums over the course of a F1 career that began in the middle of the 2018 season, the 24-year-old Briton finally kicked down that barrier to take the top step of the podium ahead of the usually imperious Red Bull of Max Verstappen by an impressive 7.612 seconds. After coming a cropper on the first lap of Saturday’s Sprint race, Norris excelled in Sunday’s GP, even though he started from back in P5 on the grid. With Verstappen looking fully in control and en route to another easy win midway through this 57-lap contest, and teammate Oscar Piastri actually seeming the quicker car in the early going, Norris made his own luck by running an extra-long first stint on his initial Medium Pirelli tires. While some contenders pitted under a brief Virtual Safety Car deployed on Lap 23 to retrieve a loose bollard from the chicane that Verstappen had knocked onto the track a few laps earlier, including Max himself, the two McLarens were not in position to take the risk of the VSC ending while in the pits and stayed out. It proved to be a prescient decision.

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When the action resumed at the end of that lap, Verstappen had been shuffled back to P4, with Piastri now in the lead, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz in P2 and Norris in third. Piastri and Sainz then pitted under green flag conditions on Lap 28, both going from Mediums to Hards under the favored one-stop strategy, with Norris then inheriting the lead and presumably attempting a one-lap overcut strategy. But that plan paid even bigger dividends when the Haas of Kevin Magnussen came together with the Williams of local boy Logan Sargeant on the very same lap, spinning Sargent backwards into the barriers and disabling his car. A Safety Car to retrieve the stricken Williams was quickly deployed on Lap 29, enabling Norris to duck into the pits for the cheap stop under the full course yellow a lap later. Norris then reemerged still in the lead, setting up a showdown for the victory with Verstappen when the SC ended in the latter part of Lap 32. The pace in the McLaren being up to the challenge, Norris held off Verstappen with aplomb at the rolling the restart and then, to the capacity crowd’s astonishment, began pulling away from the flying Dutchman. With the tension and anticipation of something truly special unfolding as the laps wound down, Norris kept pulling away from Verstappen, who for once could do nothing to get back up to Norris and make a real challenge. Perhaps the Red Bull’s front wing was damaged from hitting that bollard or perhaps the McLaren in Norris’s hands truly had the legs on the RB20 on this day — or maybe little of both. But when the checkers flew it was an ecstatic Norris with that all important first Formula 1 victory to put McLaren back in the winners circle for the first time since 2021 and relegate the runaway championship favorite Verstappen to a wholly unaccustomed P2.

Even on a triumphant day, the news was not all good for McLaren. After running strong for the first part of the race, Piastri was undone when his front wing sustained damage while dicing with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz over P4 once DRS was re-enabled following that fateful Safety Car restart. Forced to pit for a new nose under green flag conditions, Piatri plummeted out of the points en route to a disappointing P13 finish. And while Sainz was vociferous in attempting to pin the blame for the contact on the young Aussie, it was the Spaniard who was adjudged guilty of the avoidable contact after the race, which demoted him to P5 after a 5-second penalty was assessed. The second Red Bull of Sergio Perez thereby inherited P4, which somewhat camouflaged his rather bewildering lack of pace. But Sainz’s Scuderia teammate Charles Leclerc drove a very smart and controlled race to take the last step on the podium in P3, maximizing his performance without burning off his tires on a day when it was clear he didn’t really have anything to take it to Verstappen or Norris.

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton earned a good result by flawlessly executing a “backwards” Hard-to-Medium tires strategy, ensuring that he had the better performing rubber to make a late race pass on RB Honda’s Yuki Tsunoda and securing a solid P6 result. The eventual P7 finish for Tsunoda was nevertheless a solid one for the young Japanese driver and the team. Hamilton’s Silver Arrows teammate George Russell had to settle for second fiddle in Miami, the other young Briton in the feel struggling with the handling of his Merc for the majority of the race en route to a P8 result. Wise old hand Fernando Alonso somehow worked his Aston Martin up into P9 by the end of the contest despite starting from a lowly P15, the Spaniard also employing the contrarian Hard-to-Medium tire strategy. And Alpine’s Esteban Ocon took the last point in P10, a heartening result for the new lightweight upgrades to the chassis after a dreadfully slow start to the year,

Top 10 finishers of the Miami GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in a fortnight — the return Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola after last season’s cancellation due to catastrophic flooding in that beautiful region of Italy. Let’s hope for good weather and continued great pace from the McLarens. Who knows — there might actually be a challenge to Red Bull’s and Verstappen’s anticipated 2024 coronation after all. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!