Fierce fights at the front, and the potential end of a Formula 1 career further back, made for a dramatic Miami Grand Prix - so here’s everything we learned from a highly unpredictable weekend.
A battle of the fewest mistakes
Oscar Piastri made it four grand prix wins to one against Lando Norris with his Miami victory. But the way the weekend played out makes it clear that minimising mistakes will be the key to what decides McLaren's intra-team fight.
That was exemplified by Norris ending up having to take to the runoff at Turn 2 on the first lap of the race to avoid contact with Max Verstappen. Despite his irritation, team principal Andrea Stella admitted the smart play might have been for Norris to lift and settle for second place.
"It could have been better for Lando to just lift and make sure that he could keep the second position," Stella admitted.
Had Norris done so, there’s no doubt he’d have passed Verstappen and almost certainly have won the race. Instead, that victory went to Piastri.
Both drivers slightly underperformed in qualifying after minor errors, handing pole position to Verstappen. And looking back to two weeks earlier in Saudi Arabia, it was Norris’s mistake in crashing on the first run of Q3 that allowed Piastri, whose underlying pace was weaker, a clearer run at victory.
With the pace advantage swinging back and forth between Piastri and Norris, right now the Australian owes his 16-point championship lead to minimising the mistakes.
An unexpected battering
McLaren scoffs at suggestions it has a dominant car, but there’s no question that was the case in the Miami Grand Prix with a 1-2 in both the sprint and main race.
So big was its advantage that nearest challenger George Russell's Mercedes was almost 40 seconds off the lead on Sunday.
There had been no real consensus in the paddock ahead of Miami about just how much of an edge McLaren had.
After the season-opener in Australia everyone was talking of it winning races by a country mile, but things have been much closer than expected more recently – like in Japan, where Max Verstappen won and in Saudi Arabia where he should have won.
Then Miami’s heat, its track layout and surface, and the ease with which overtaking was possible, left everyone in no doubt that the MCL39 is miles ahead.
The car has some flaws – like its front brake locking sensitivity in qualifying that could hurt it at tracks where passing is not easy if it starts too far back on the grid – but when it comes to tyre management it is streets ahead of everyone else.
What we do not know though is how much the picture of Miami was clouded by the fact that Red Bull clearly underperformed. A new floor update on Verstappen’s car did not bring a dramatic change in fortune, but it is clear the RB21 is quick on a single lap when new tyre grip can mask some of its balance sensitivities.
It is clearly not as good as the McLaren in managing rear tyre temperatures, and some extra brake problems that Verstappen suffered – which then further contributed to heating up the rubber – left it even more exposed.
Key for Red Bull now is trying to sort out how to better keep its tyre temps under control – or hope that the flexi wing shake-up expected for the Spanish Grand Prix does actually shuffle things in its favour.
Antonelli can produce the magic now
Kimi Antonelli hit the ground running on his first time at the Miami track. While Mercedes team-mate Russell admitted to lacking confidence, the 18-year-old had no problem with the car dancing around in qualifying trim when the grip wasn’t at its best.
The result was a surprise pole position for the sprint, with team principal Toto Wolff paying tribute to his charge’s "very mature progression" after a low-risk start to the season.
Antonelli also repeated that eye-catching pace in qualifying proper, lapping just 0.067s off pole position. That confirmed that the searing pace everyone was expecting is finally being unleashed.
The downside was that the races didn’t go quite as hoped. He didn’t have a great start in the sprint, tried to hang on around the outside of Piastri and predictably was run out of road.
While he was unhappy with the McLaren driver, on reflection, he will likely realise he could have slotted in behind and consolidated second rather than exposing himself to dropping down the order. That said, Red Bull’s unsafe release, which forced Antonelli to go around and pit again, was what ultimately cost him a much better result.
In the main race, Antonelli struggled a little with the tyres and finished sixth, being passed by Alex Albon along the way. Again, that was crucial knowledge banked.
While the races weren’t perfect, Wolff felt it was important progress for Antonelli on the learning curve - "It’s just part of the learning curve, nothing that is disappointing" - and the lessons of Miami will likely be learned very fast.
Williams peak even higher than we thought
It was no surprise to see Williams ahead of its midfield rivals in Miami given it’s been strong all season. But what was unexpected was how close it was to the front with its smallest qualifying deficit of the season.
WILLIAMS 2025 QUALIFYING DEFICIT
Australia: 0.854%
China: 1.175%
Japan: 0.727%
Bahrain: 0.934%
Saudi Arabia: 0.997%
Miami: 0.423%
Carlos Sainz was just three-and-a-half tenths off Verstappen’s pole position time and that single-lap pace translated into strong race pace. Albon turned that into fourth place on-the-road in the sprint, which was lost to a penalty for speeding under the safety car, and fifth in the grand prix.
Most impressively, that meant Williams was not only at the head of F1’s Class B, but also had the edge on Ferrari. And Sainz might have beaten the Ferraris as well, but for misfortune in the race.
On a track with long straights and fewer of the combined braking-and-turning entries into slower corners where the car can struggle, the Williams was at its best. And while Albon knew that the track would suit the car, he didn’t expect it to be quite as competitive as it was.
This allowed Williams to consolidate its hold on fifth place, and even led to Sainz wondering what might be possible if more aerodynamic testing resources were thrown at the car rather than, justifiably, the focus being on 2026.
Ferrari hits a new low
Throughout Ferrari’s difficult start to the season, team principal Fred Vasseur has clung onto the idea that the car has "potential". But rather than extracting that potential in Miami, Ferrari had its worst weekend of the season. And that’s already quite a low bar.
A fortunate third place for Lewis Hamilton in the sprint aside, this was a painful weekend.
"We are maximising the potential of the car. It shows the potential is just not there," Charles Leclerc said, having qualified eighth, almost six tenths adrift of pole.
That was borne out by Leclerc and Hamilton finishing seventh and eighth in the grand prix after a painful race compounded by the very public team orders disagreements. Again, Vasseur defended the way the race was run, but even when being diplomatic later on, it was clear the drivers were not happy.
The one positive is that Hamilton was at least closer to Leclerc on pace than he was in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The trouble is, with car instability a problem for him, it could just be that the configuration of the Miami tracks lacked many of the faster corners where that weakness was so dramatically exposed.
But perhaps the one positive for Ferrari is that Hamilton was at least slightly happier in Miami. And that’s cold comfort given the car troubles that dropped it to fifth-best behind Williams.
This might've been Doohan's last race
What looked like an unfortunate end to Jack Doohan’s Miami Grand Prix may well prove to be the end of his F1 career entirely.
Doohan retired on lap one in Miami after colliding with Liam Lawson at the first corner. It was an incident he was not entirely to blame for, but did seem to be born from caution, and a little imprecision.
And it was costly. Not just for the retirement and yet more damage, but for Doohan’s race seat. He was told by the team before leaving the track that it intended to replace him for the next race in Imola.
If so, it ends a long-running saga over whether Doohan would last with Franco Colapinto waiting in the wings. And it’s unfortunate that it comes after Doohan outqualified Pierre Gasly for the first time.
But it appears that Alpine’s messaging that Doohan was safe until the summer was either smoke and mirrors from Flavio Briatore, or caveated by an unspoken “subject to race-by-race reviews” - as Doohan has been living grand prix to grand prix and has run out of time disappointingly early.
Aston Martin got even worse
Don’t let Fernando Alonso’s SQ3 appearance or Lance Stroll’s fortuitous fifth place in the sprint fool you, this was Aston Martin’s worst weekend of the year in terms of pace.
For the first time this year, it was unequivocally the least competitive car as proved by its poor performance in qualifying proper. Alonso’s damning indictment on Saturday was that "Q1 is our limit" right now.
And while Aston Martin does have some upgrades in the pipeline, expectations are tempered. The primary focus is 2026 and while the 2025 season was always going to be of secondary importance the AMR25 appears to have become even more of a test bed for future progress than ever before.
Team principal Andy Cowell even admitted in Miami that the priority is gathering great data rather than scoring points, given the need to improve correlation and ensure the best possible connection between windtunnel, CFD and the real world.
His position is a logical one, but with another 18 race weekends to go, it paints a somewhat bleak picture for how the rest of 2025 will play out.
Now it’s all about short-term pain for (hopefully) plenty of long-term gain.
F1 had an 11th team (sort of)
F1 had an 11th team in Miami - and no, for once we’re not talking about the APX entry the new F1 movie is based around.
F1’s real 11th team Cadillac, which joins the grid next year, had a big presence at this race and held a team launch event during the weekend.
It marked the first time all the key stakeholders and leaders of the General Motors/TWG owned project, with bases in the UK and US, had come together since the entry was finally granted in March.
While there’s still little of substance about the team in public, it was a milestone moment to be out in force in the paddock and to start shouting about itself a little more.
Expect that to increase as the year goes on and Cadillac’s 2026 debut draws closer.
