The Formula 1 McLaren team by Lando Norris24, the win was the best the sport could have hoped for in Miami.
Urheilu’s F1 expert Jukka Mildhin according to the young British driver Norris currently enjoys huge popularity among the youth – and especially among the female audience. Sympathetic Norris’ victory was also reflected in the fact that all the drivers were genuinely happy for him. Even the one in a position of power Max Verstappen was happy with his second place in this case.
Norris hadn’t won practically anything before this in six years, but McLaren’s golden nugget had been working hard for a long time. For a promising driver, becoming one of the GP winners is like opening a ketchup bottle for the rest of the season as well.
Mildh tells the hottest topics of the race weekend in Miami.
What solved it?
Norris was able to take the opening victory of his career in his 110th GP race, when McLaren succeeded in timing his pit stop. Brittikuski was taken to the pits when the safety car was on the track halfway through the race.
In addition to successful tactics, McLaren’s new upgrade parts gave Norris the keys to victory.
– McLaren got a pretty big upgrade package for this race. The car worked excellently, and most of the teams had problems with the tires in this race, but at McLaren they worked great, says Mildh.
– It was also decisive that Verstappen, who has dominated the F1 series in recent years, had a rare bad race weekend. The front end of the car lacked grip, causing the Red Bull to understeer in corners.
What speaks?
A Finnish driver makes Mildh the talk of the Miami weekend Valtteri Bottas a difficult situation at Sauber. The team, which had a miserable start to the season, still has no World Championship points, and it acquired a new race engineer in Miami.
The team that will change to Audi for the 2026 season has already started to look to the future.
– It must be quite difficult to find motivation when the race engineer is suddenly changed without notice and dramatic decisions related to competition and performance are made through someone else. After all, it’s pretty wild that Bottas is getting a bit of a guinea pig role.
– Now that the owner has changed and Audi’s team is starting to arrive and people are being changed in the middle of the season, this season will clearly be sacrificed to make this change, because next year the team will have to operate in a completely different way, even if Audi comes in 2026.
What about Bottas?
Bottas was 16th in Miami and is still without WC points. The Finn’s departure was successful, but he got stuck in the post-departure traffic jam. Bottas started the race as the only one with soft tires, but was unable to make use of them in the wet.
– Like many other teams, tire performance is a big problem for Sauber as well. Miami’s track is such that it doesn’t have that much grip compared to many other tracks. Tires are hard to get to the right temperatures.
– In general, a soft tire could be quite good at the beginning on this track, but when you can’t get it to work right away and get stuck, it’s clear that it affects the race. The 16th place is not flattering.
A flop?
Haas driver by Kevin Magnussen in Mildh’s opinion, the driving style is starting to have worrying features. Magnussen collided with Williams in the race to Logan Sargeantwhich had to be interrupted.
The Daneskuski was able to continue his race, received a 10-second time penalty and was 19th in the final results, i.e. the last to reach the finish line. He also received several penalties in Saturday’s sprint race.
Mildh estimates that Magnussen’s actions are due to the stall game. Team mate Nico Hulkenberg has made a more convincing mark on Haas than Magnussen. The 37-year-old Hülkenberg has six World Series points and will move to Sauber next season. Magnussen has one World Championship point.
– He squeezes the wheel too much and causes quite a lot of destruction. He was also involved in the only decent crash of the day. A good man and a nice guy, but unfortunately someone is wrong in the execution now, says Mildh.
Surprise?
Mildh considers McLaren’s victory to be the surprise of the weekend, even though the team, which has developed at a tremendous pace, has a very strong ownership and management team.
– Everything works well, but Red Bull has been so superior as a car. After six races, it’s hard for others to catch up if the car is superior.
McLaren has made the new update packages work nicely in a tight schedule. Because of the sprint competition, only one practice session was run over the weekend.
– The team has done a very good job. It’s a surprise that the car seems really strong at this stage – they will surely mix the top pack even stronger in the future.