Miami Madness!!!

 MIAMI GRAND PRIX 2025

photo credit: formula1.com

PIAS-THREE!

Oscar Piastri has made it three in a row.

Dominating the race and looks like now even the whole season.

This week Oscar again dominated the race from start to end amassing his 6th career win which puts him a race win above his teammate Lando Norris who is considerably more experienced and has many more race starts under his belt than Oscar.

Oscar this season has come out from under the shadows and has become the main candidate for winning the world championship this season. Due to the incident between Max and Lando in the start of the race and a superb start from Oscar himself, he slid up from P4 to P2 in a short amount of time. Even though he was on the back foot after qualifying he made up for it beautifully with wonderful presence of mind and car positioning to get to P2 behind Max. From there on, Oscar just closed in on Max lap by lap which lead to a brilliant battle stirring up between Max and Oscar in which ultimately Oscar won with Oscar squeezing Max to the inside of turn 1 yet giving him just enough room not to get a penalty due to this strategic play Max went deep into turn 1 locking up and made way for Oscar to slide through into the lead of the race. Due to this fearsome battle between Oscar and Max, Lando had caught up to the back of them with him passing both the Mercedes and Williams to catch back up to Max. Lando had lost places at turn 1 due to Max oversteering and coming into the path of Lando which made him back off or else would have crashed into the walls. 

After catching back up, Lando and Max had one of the best battles ever yet it was clean and exciting for the fans but very frustrating for Lando as lap after lap, corner after corner Max was diving to cover the inside line which was enough to stop Lando and not give him room to overtake. In the end, Lando was able to overtake Max, on that instance Max did not really put up a fight. This kerfuffle between Max and Lando caused him to lose 9 seconds to Oscar. 

At the end,  during the closing stages of the race he closed up to Oscar to about 4.5 seconds yet it was not enough with the amount of laps left, due to the amount of time he lost being behind Max.

Overall, it was the best result possible for McLaren, dominating the race and finishing almost 35 seconds ahead of third place man George Russell. It seemed like the McLaren's had a rocket engine strapped on the back of their cars propelling them to just fly off into a race of their own. But for Lando it was not what he hoped for ideally, but it was just his luck and Max that took his well deserved win from him. He had both the qualifying pace and race pace yet he could not win due to the circumstances.

Heading on to Max Verstappen... He was just a menace throughout the race, trying to hamper both the McLaren's on their way to victory. He put up a staunch defence even though his car was quite a lot slower than the McLaren's. He tried to stop them to the best of his abilities, but in the end, just couldn't, they were just too fast. Overall, in hindsight Max will look back on the race and think that he should not have tried to stop the McLaren's as the time he lost in battling them, gave way for George Russell to come out ahead of him after the pitstops. After George had gained track position, Max just could not catch up and had to settle for a mere P4, a quite disappointing result for the reigning world champion who started from pole. 

Yuki Tsunoda, well he is doing better than Liam Lawson did in his two races but just not good enough as per Red Bull's standards, only scoring a point in the end. 

Overall, not a good result for Red Bull to say the least.

Mercedes are kind of the underdogs this season. They come into the paddock race after race on the backfoot, having their car slower than the competition but honestly their strategy  and drivers do justice to the lack of pace in that car. Mercedes with George Russell were again on the podium and his teammate Kimi Antonelli ended up in P6, a good result considering this is his first F1 season. He has also, got the sprint pole which was a marvelous feat in itself, to be on pole at just 18 years in age!!

Overall, Mercedes are not fighting for wins like they would want to but they are surely making most of their situation.

Williams just caught everyone off guard to say the least. They had the 4th fastest car in this race, faster than the Ferrari's. Their driver's put on a show for everyone challenging cars like the Mercedes and Ferrari, something no one would have expected. No one would even believe that Williams were the slowest car just a few years ago, but this just shows how James Vowles has turned the team around to get them back up the field. Albon finished the race in P5 and Carlos in P9 just behind the Ferrari's. Williams after McLaren have had the biggest turn around of all teams. Just a mega result for them to get 12 points. They are seriously now the 5th fastest team on the grid, getting points race weekend after race weekend.

A horrible race for Ferrari... they just lacked pace throughout and the car was not fast on the straights nor they had grip throughout the corners, the car's balanced just looked to be all over the place. On top of that, the inter-team drama between swapping Lewis and Charles just made them lose out more time and track position which they could have gained if Lewis had been let past earlier or Leclerc was let past earlier the next time. Overall, a horrid race for Ferrari finishing P7 and P8 way behind their competitors. Lewis had a brilliant sprint finishing in P3 and recovered well in the race from P12 to P8, but this is not what he came to Ferrari for. He came to win to Ferrari and they are yet very far. 

The racing bulls had pace yet they could not finish in the points as all the top five teams took all the points. Isack Hadjar finished in P11 and Lawson had to retire after lap 1 contact with Jack Doohan.

Aston Martin were the slowest of all the cars who finished this race, overall they just lacked pace this race. The Haas had decent race pace with Ocon battling the likes of Hamilton and he finished in P12 just behind the VCaRb of Hadjar.  Sauber were better off than their previous race yet not near the points again. As for Bearman and Bortolleto, both had to retire due to power unit failures, which puts a bad name to Ferrari power units as both cars had the same Ferrari power unit.

Alpine just did not have the pace they have had the last few races. But the sad thing they have done is they have sacked Jack Doohan to get in Franco Colapinto. A Red Bull move to say the least, removing a driver as soon as possible if they are not performing from day one. They ended the career of a rookie who was just getting to terms with the car. 

Overall, it was a race which was just brilliant, with the sprint having changing conditions and the actual race having some brilliant overtakes and defending from all drivers across the field. The takeaways from the race are that McLaren seem to have just got faster whereas the Red Bull seems to have just gone backwards in terms of pace. Mercedes have caught up and seemed to have equal or passed the Red Bull in terms of pace and look to have the second fastest car on the grid with both drivers performing, whereas Max Verstappen is carrying the whole Red Bull team. 

Next on we head to the country which is termed as the hub of motorsport with many of the famous tracks, drivers team and the home of the longest standing team in Formula 1, Ferrari. We are heading onto Imola, a fast yet tight and twisting track with both low and high speed corners... arguably one of the best tracks in the world. We will wait to see whether McLaren and Piastri continue their winning streak or will his teammate Lando make in rows into his point deficit to his teammate. Or else will Ferrari pull an Italian miracle and win in their home country, their home race like last year. Only time will tell...