Oscar Piastri has extended the championship lead over his teammate after leading a McLaren 1-2 at the Miami Grand Prix.
The start saw both Verstappen and Norris, though a lock up for Verstappen gave Norris the opportunity to take the lead on the exit.
Verstappen would fight for the place, running Norris a bit wide and forcing him to drop a few positions and allowing Antonelli and Piastri through.
The opening lap saw contact between Liam Lawson and Jack Doohan, with the latter getting a puncture and would ultimately retire from the race as a result of the incident and bring out the virtual safety car.
Piastri would make light work of Antonelli before setting his sights on Verstappen, with the pace of the Australian’s McLaren over the Red Bull becoming immediately apparent.
Verstappen would fight as hard as he could, all the while complaining of an issue with his brakes. This would allow Norris, who managed to quickly climb back to third, to start making some gains on the two ahead.
A mistake from Verstappen saw the reigning world champion go deep into turn 1 on lap 13, which gave Piastri an easy window to drive past and take the lead of the race.
Despite now being in second place, Verstappen would continue to fight hard with Lando Norris. This would cost the Brit a significant amount of time as he struggled to pass, and by the time he did, he would be just under 9 seconds behind his teammate and championship rival.
The action from then on would die down. Rain was being spoken about as a possibility in the middle portion of this race, though this would ultimately never come to fruition.
Lap 22 saw a close fight between Esteban Ocon and Lewis Hamilton, with the Ferrari car looking particularly off the pace for much of the weekend. Hamilton would come out on top in this encounter, climbing into 10th place.
Cars would begin to put soon after, with strategy looking to be a simple one stop between medium and hard tyres. Antonelli would pit from fourth on lap 26, having been within two seconds of third placed Verstappen and hoping to get a potential undercut. However, a somewhat slow pitstop ruined his chances of achieving this.
Lap 28 saw Ollie Bear man’s engine give out on him, with his retirement bringing in the second virtual safety car of the race. This benefitted those who had yet to pit such as the two Ferrari cars.
George Russell had a particularly good restart after the virtual safety car ended, managing to snag third place from the hands of both Antonelli and Verstappen.
Yuki Tsunoda would find himself with a five second time penalty after it was found that he sped in the pitlane.
The third and final virtual safety car of the grand prix came out on lap 33, after Bortoleto suffered his own mechanical issues, having to pull over on the back straight and retire the car.
This restart saw a close fight between the two Ferraris and Carlos Sainz, with Leclerc managing to overtake his former teammate with an aggressive but fair move at turn 1, putting Sainz in a compromised position that allowed Hamilton to swoop by as well.
Hamilton was looking quick on fresh mediums when everyone else around him had hard tyres on, though he was unable to get by his teammate. After a few laps, the team opted to swap the two cars round so as to see whether or not he could chase down Antonelli.
Hamilton would fail to do so, and soon started to be slower than the hard tyre runners around him, most notably Leclerc. The two Ferraris would ultimately swap back around with the hope that Leclerc could chase down Antonelli, though he took would fail in this endeavour.
Hamilton appeared frustrated with the team’s decision making, sarcastically asking if he should let Sainz by as well when he was updated on the Spaniard’s position behind.
The latter stages of the race saw Norris chip away at Piastri’s lead, though it wasn’t by enough to seriously challenge for the win, leaving Piastri to take his third win on the bounce.
The top of the championship sees Piastri lead Norris by 16 points after one quarter of the season has been completed, while Verstappen trails by 32 points.
The next race is the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, which will take place on May 18.
