The 2025 Miami Grand Prix was one of the better race weekends so far
If you haven’t been following this season of Formula 1, now might be a good time to do so as the races and battles on and off the grid are getting more exciting, with this weekend’s stint in Miami, Florida being one of the most exciting ones we’ve seen so far.
A crazy, crazy sprint race
The idea of sprint races still doesn’t sit that well with traditional fans, but this weekend’s sprint was nothing short of crazy, so we’ll keep it as short as possible.
Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes-AMG) got his first-ever pole position, making him one of the youngest pole-sitters in Formula 1 history. Unfortunately, the race soured for him as he lost the lead to Oscar Piastri (McLaren), and got into a pit lane collision with Max Verstappen (Red Bull) after an unsafe release by the team (and also getting a 10-second time penalty), all while Carlos Sainz (Williams) caused a yellow flag because of a puncture. Kimi Antonelli, sadly, finished P10.
Piastri would’ve won the race, if not for a last-minute collision between Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) drew out a safety car, which his teammate Lando Norris (McLaren) beat him to the back of the safety car after a pit stop, ultimately handing Lando the sprint win. While Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) didn’t even start the race, things did look up for Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) as he finished P3 during the sprint, but…
Ferrari seems to have broken Lewis
It only took a few races into the season before the Ferrari “curse” got to Lewis Hamilton, as he got the full experience of bad Ferrari strategy and some rather sassy team radio exchanges with him and his engineer, which cost him and Charles Leclerc valuable points in the championship.
Most of his race was spent behind his teammate, where he was faster because he was on the medium tires versus his teammate’s hard tires.
The opportunity was there for Lewis to catch up with Antonelli, but the team took too long to respond, leading to some frustrated messages like “This is not good teamwork”, “Have a tea break while you’re at it”, or even Lewis asking his team “So you don’t think I’m going to catch up or what?”, with the engineer replying a monotonous “Yes.”
The team was struggling to beat the Williams cars, with Lewis having a late-stage scrap with Carlos Sainz (Williams), who finished P9. Charles Leclerc finished in P7, and Lewis Hamilton finished in P8.
Most of the rookies had a bad race weekend
At the start of the race, Jack Doohan (Alpine) makes contact with Liam Lawson, which forces Doohan to retire as he isn’t able to make it back to the pits, forcing a Virtual Safety Car. Oliver Bearman (Haas) suddenly has engine problems on Lap 29, forcing him to retire and another VSC is called out.
A few laps later (Lap 33), Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) faces similar mechanical issues and pulls over to the side of the track to retire as well. Eventually, Lawson is forced to retire after running last for most of the race, due to damage from the Lap 1 collision.
Antonelli did muster an impressive P6 finish, and Isack Hadjar (Racing Bull) finished outside of the points in P10 behind his former teammate Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull).
McLaren dominance could bore fans
Joke and obvious headline title aside, the two Papayas are on track to dominate this season if its closest rivals, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG don’t do anything to stop that, as seen by this race. Even if Verstappen clinched the pole position for this race, it only took 14 laps for Piastri to cleanly overtake the four-time world champion, disappearing ahead of him three laps later.
This is followed by Norris overtaking Verstappen on Lap 18 even after a back-and-forth exchange, where Norris had to give the position back after pushing Verstappen off. At one point, the two McLarens were lapping a whole second faster than everyone else on the track.
At the end of the race, the two cross in a 1-2 finish (Piastri P1, Norris P2), with George Russell (Mercedes-AMG) trailing behind the leader by a massive 37-second difference in P3. Max Verstappen finishes P4, with the Williams of Alexander Albon finishing in P5.
With the championship battle now comfortably being between the two McLaren drivers, this could prove to be a very, very exciting season for fans as we have the potential to relive something similar to the Senna-Prost rivalry of 1988 to 1990.
The next race, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, will happen in two weeks at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, more popularly known as Imola, on Sunday, May 18, 9:00 pm.
