Reigning F1 world champion Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who has won four of five races this season, continued to dominate the opening day of the Miami GP weekend on Friday. Verstappen was also fastest in practice in the qualifying sessions for Saturday’s sprint race.
Verstappen finished 0.108s behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and 0.235s behind team-mate Sergio Perez. RB’s Daniel Ricciardo had a good start to the fourth.
Mercedes took a dark turn in qualifying. Both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were relegated from the last category, i.e. the top ten. Russell was 11th and Hamilton 12th.
Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas was even worse. He finished 18th in the first category, which meant that the path to the next sessions of qualifying sessions was immediately closed. After all, Bottas is likely to be penalized because he dangerously swerved the McLaren from behind at the front corner of Oscar Piastre. There was a hit, but apparently not much.
Bottas had to face something new in Miami as the team changed his race engineer. As Bottas announced on the team radio that he was unaware of the McLaren behind him, the tuition was apparently due.
– You didn’t tell me, Bottas told Autosport in the pit By.
Saturday’s sprint race will take place at 19-20 Finnish time. In the evening, starting at 11 o’clock, there will be time trials for Sunday’s GP race.
