World champion Max Verstappen on Sunday powered from ninth on the grid to beat teammate Sergio Perez and extend Red Bull’s all-conquering start to the season with victory at the Miami Grand Prix.
The win — Red Bull’s fifth from five races this season — extends Verstappen’s lead at the top of the standings to 14 points and follows his triumph in the inaugural Miami race last year.
The 1-2 for Red Bull is their fourth in five races so far this year as the team utterly dominate the sport leaving their rivals to battle for the third podium position.
Photo: AFP
Aston Martin’s Spanish veteran Fernando Alonso took third for his fourth podium in five races this season as he continues to enjoy his late career revival.
Verstappen had to work hard for his third victory of the campaign after his disappointing performance in Saturday’s qualifying left him in the middle of the grid.
The speed of the Red Bull car, combined with smart decisions on tires, meant that the Dutchman was able to quickly get himself in contention and then produce a late surge to beat Perez, who remains second in the standings.
Perez, starting on pole, made the perfect start, racing clear of his rivals but Verstappen, on hard tires, quickly moved through the field and took just 15 laps to reach second place behind his teammate.
Perez pitted on lap 20 allowing Verstappen to take the lead, but the Dutchman had to give that up when he went into the pits on lap 46, changing to the medium compound tires and coming out 1.2 seconds behind.
It took just two laps for Verstappen, who won the inaugural Miami Grand Prix a year ago, to take advantage of his fresher tires with better grip as, after a brief joust, he overtook the Mexican, on 25-lap-old tires, to take the lead.
Verstappen’s 38th win for Red Bull equals the team record set by Sebastian Vettel and is the first time a driver has won from exactly ninth on the grid since Niki Lauda at the French Grand Prix in 1984.
“For sure winning a race from P9 is always very satisfying,” he said.
While powering around a track at average speeds of about 220kph, drivers are presumably focused solely on the road and their rivals. Not Alonso.
He said he was following the action on the giant TV screens.
Alonso gave the game away with his radio communication to his team where he commented on a move with about 10 laps to go from his Canadian teammate Lance Stroll, who overtook Alex Albon in the Williams.
“Which position is Lance? Great move into turn one,” Alonso was caught saying on the team radio.
His comment caused puzzlement and amusement on the race broadcast commentary and when asked by reporters about the observation, he said he had seen the action on the course’s big screens.
“I think this circuit, we have big TV screens out of some of the low speed corners. So it was very easy to follow the race on TV,” he told a post-race news conference.
“I saw one overtake... It was a little bit unexpected lonely race for us, we were thinking [we would have] a more difficult race,” he said.
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