On the 21st lap of the Miami GP, Max Verstappen made a rare mistake. A small slide in the chicane, he jumped over the curb and shaved off the plastic bollard that was there for orientation. “I didn’t like it, so I decided to shoot it down and test the durability of the front wing,” Verstappen just jokes about it. It doesn’t sound so relaxed from the team side. Did he drive his car and ruin his chance of victory?
Verstappen, who ended up in second place, finished an impressive 7.612 seconds behind Lando Norris after the McLaren was very lucky with a safety car and was given the lead shortly after the middle of the race. After that, he simply drove away from the otherwise dominant Red Bull. “There was no damage,” said Verstappen in the press conference. A view that Red Bull team boss Christian Horner does not share at all.
Lando Norris celebrates his long-awaited Formula 1 victory: About time!
How serious is the bollard damage? Verstappen and Horner disagree
Verstappen had first jammed the bollard in the suspension and dragged it along. Then he flew backwards over the car. According to Horner, there was probably more severe contact with the underbody on the left rear: “There’s a good bit missing, and you can see that it’s starting to bend, which certainly doesn’t help.”
“He lost two and a half tenths on every lap in turn one,” notes Horner. Although he doesn’t have the exact numbers yet and therefore doesn’t know whether that was due to the damage: “We’ll take a close look at the effects, but he had enough pace that he drove away from Oscar at one point.” Verstappen, who was still leading, also spent the first half of the race in a duel with a McLaren Oscar Piastri in the rear. He couldn’t shake it off, but he could always keep his distance for a good three seconds.
This analysis is contrasted with the opinion of Verstappen himself: “It didn’t feel any different. I don’t know. Maybe it was already broken. I mean, I hit the thing and my pace was the same afterwards.” Fundamentally, his RB20 wasn’t good over the Miami weekend.
Weak Red Bull has no answer to Norris in Miami
Verstappen had won the sprint, but it was the same picture as in the Grand Prix. Lead, but don’t drive away. Verstappen describes the feeling as “pretty bad.” “On the medium it was still reasonably good, but on the hard it was quite a disaster. Just little grip, difficult balance in slow corners, I couldn’t load the rear. While in fast corners I had a lot of understeer. You can’t do that balancing, those are two different things.”
Nevertheless, Horner believes it would have been enough to win as long as Verstappen had simply stayed in front: “We didn’t have 25 seconds in hand, but we saw it in the sprint – I think we had enough.” Then Verstappen suffered an extra dose of bad luck with the safety car on lap 29. He had completed his first and only stop six laps earlier. On paper, the optimal time to stop, says Horner.
Formula 1 – Miami 2024 – Race – Result
Norris extended the first stint and was first in a short time. The safety car now guaranteed him a stop at a cheap rate. When he missed it as he left the pits and picked up second-placed Verstappen instead, costing the Red Bull more time, it was confirmed that Norris would remain in the lead. Bad luck, Verstappen and Horner agree. It just happens sometimes in motorsport. Neither of them sees the need to complain.
Verstappen can still live with the Norris victory, Photo: LAT Images
And at least Verstappen was still second, right behind Norris: “Even with the safety car, we had every chance to win today, but we weren’t fast enough after that.” As soon as he received Norris’s lap times on the old starting medium after his stop, he suspected: “They were pretty crazy. I would never have been able to drive them. Even without the safety car, he would have come with fresher tires and I would have pushed hard have to fight him off.” Whether this was due to damage or not remains to be seen.
First Formula 1 victory! Lando Norris wins Miami GP with safety car luck