Does McLaren’s Miami Grand Prix victory, aided by their latest upgrade package, signal the team will be a much more competitive force over the coming races?
On the face of it there are strong reasons to think not. Lando Norris qualified behind both Red Bulls and both Ferraris, and was elevated into first place by a well-timed Safety Car period. The only one of the two McLaren drivers to have all of the new parts for the MCL38, Norris was 0.4% off the absolute pace in Miami, no better than they managed earlier in the season at Suzuka, where the gap was 0.33%.
But there are other signs that Norris’ breakthrough victory owed plenty to the upgrades McLaren introduced last weekend. Miami has tended not to be a strong track for this team, and at other venues which suit their car better they may be even more competitive.
Last year McLaren were 1.82% off the pace at Miami, one of their worst performances of the season. Yes, this was before the first of their game-changing upgrades that year, but four weeks later in Spain with much the same car they were just 0.7% off.
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The Miami weekend was complicated by a lack of practice time owing to the sprint race format. This was exacerbated by the interaction between Miami’s unusual track surface and Pirelli’s often fickle rubber, which left teams switching between medium and soft compounds in qualifying. In qualifying for the sprint race Norris achieved the fastest time of the whole session on medium rubber in the second stage, but couldn’t beat it when he put softs on a few minutes later.
When it came down to consistent running in the race, McLaren wrung more out of their tyres for longer than even Red Bull could manage. That was what made Norris a threat during the Safety Car period to begin with: McLaren wisely avoided reacting to Sergio Perez’s pit stop ahead of him, and left Norris out for lap after lap on the medium rubber to bring him into contention.
McLaren improved their lap times by more than any other team last weekend; indeed, only two other teams managed to lap quicker in Miami than they had 12 months earlier. The team which struggled the most was Aston Martin, who couldn’t get within a second of their best time at a track where Fernando Alonso finished on the podium a month ago.
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Alonso managed to pass Esteban Ocon for ninth place in the race. Alpine bagged their first points, and made a surprise appearance in the top half of the lap time rankings. However this was thanks to a blinder of a lap by Pierre Gasly in the first phase of qualifying, which had he been able to duplicate in Q2 would have got him into Q3.
But Gasly was far from alone in being unable to consistently replicate his best lap times. No driver managed to put their three quickest sector times together over a single lap.
Even taking that into account, McLaren was no better than the third-quickest team on single-lap pace. But given their past weakness in Miami, and the performance they showed over a race stint, the team can approach the coming races with more confidence they can take the fight to Red Bull and Ferrari.
Sector times
| P. | # | Driver | S1 | S2 | S3 | Ultimate lap (deficit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Max Verstappen | 28.783 (1) | 33.467 (2) | 24.875 (2) | 1’27.125 (+0.116) |
| 2 | 11 | Sergio Perez | 28.85 (3) | 33.44 (1) | 24.852 (1) | 1’27.142 (+0.318) |
| 3 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | 28.793 (2) | 33.524 (3) | 24.949 (6) | 1’27.266 (+0.116) |
| 4 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | 28.874 (4) | 33.571 (5) | 24.936 (4) | 1’27.381 (+0.074) |
| 5 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | 28.93 (6) | 33.53 (4) | 24.981 (9) | 1’27.441 (+0.234) |
| 6 | 4 | Lando Norris | 28.928 (5) | 33.585 (6) | 24.95 (8) | 1’27.463 (+0.131) |
| 7 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | 29.02 (7) | 33.635 (8) | 25.022 (11) | 1’27.677 (+0.020) |
| 8 | 63 | George Russell | 29.125 (8) | 33.678 (9) | 25.02 (10) | 1’27.823 (+0.244) |
| 9 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | 29.281 (12) | 33.748 (14) | 24.902 (3) | 1’27.931 (+0.215) |
| 10 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | 29.334 (13) | 33.605 (7) | 25.022 (11) | 1’27.961 (+0.015) |
| 11 | 18 | Lance Stroll | 29.271 (10) | 33.783 (18) | 24.949 (6) | 1’28.003 (+0.174) |
| 12 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | 29.27 (9) | 33.689 (10) | 25.072 (15) | 1’28.031 (+0.136) |
| 13 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | 29.28 (11) | 33.769 (15) | 25.065 (13) | 1’28.114 (+0.095) |
| 14 | 23 | Alexander Albon | 29.498 (16) | 33.774 (16) | 25.067 (14) | 1’28.339 (+0.004) |
| 15 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | 29.51 (17) | 33.725 (11) | 25.126 (18) | 1’28.361 (+0.258) |
| 16 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | 29.467 (14) | 33.778 (17) | 25.118 (17) | 1’28.363 (+0.064) |
| 17 | 2 | Logan Sargeant | 29.724 (20) | 33.736 (13) | 24.944 (5) | 1’28.404 (+0.083) |
| 18 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | 29.47 (15) | 33.849 (19) | 25.105 (16) | 1’28.424 (+0.039) |
| 19 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | 29.525 (18) | 33.727 (12) | 25.248 (20) | 1’28.500 (+0.117) |
| 20 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | 29.624 (19) | 33.903 (20) | 25.196 (19) | 1’28.723 (+0.101) |
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Field performance
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2024 Miami Grand Prix
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