The world of Formula One left the state of Florida with a collective smile on its face. In the modern era where one driver and team appear to dominate the sport, a first time victory for Lando Norris was the thing that dreams are made from. Yet McLaren now reveal that it was Oscar Piastri who had the better pace at times in the Miami GP even though there Aussie finished the race a disappointing P13.

Piastri was battling with Carlos Sainz when the pair came together causing damage to the McLaren car. Yet in the first stint, Oscar was proven to be the closest challenger to max Verstappen in the lead of the race. 

 

 

 

Lando wiped out in Sprint

Oscar started the race in fourth but with excellent driving that soon became second and when Max Verstappen pitted for fresh rubber, and a car check following him hitting a bollard, Piastri took the lead of the race before it was compromised by the emerging safety car.

Kevin Magnussen and the seemingly doomed Logan Sargent had a coming together which brought out the safety car and ended the Williams driver’s race. But all this was to Lando Norris’ advantage given he was the remaining lead driver yet to pit and under the safety car he saved around 11 seconds on his rivals.

Yet even without the safety car the heavily upgraded McLaren was clearly working well although Oscar Piastri only had about half of the new parts on his MCL38. Lando had suffered there ignominy of a first corner retirement on Saturday in the shorter race form called the Sprint.

A combination of a bonsai Lewis Hamilton down the inside at the first corner together with the all to regular inabilities of Lance Stroll, saw Lando’s McLaren wiped out on the outside of turn 1.

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Piastri as quick as Verstappen

Team boss Andreas Stella was checking out all the metrics and found it worthy of note to state Oscar out qualified Norris in the Sprint and was effectively on a par in qualifying for the Grand Prix.

“Oscar comes out of [Miami] even more conscious of his strengths as a driver,” he said. “We sort of knew already how fast he is on a single lap.

“Consider that he didn’t have the full package – and let me pay proper credit to Oscar, the gap he had to Lando in qualifying is smaller than the difference of the package he had.

“So he was really pulling off strong performance over a single lap in very difficult conditions, like all drivers with soft tyres.”

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Aussie gets on top of tyres

Piastri has struggled since debuting with the sensitive tyres Formula One runs which are very different to those used in the junior Formulae of F3 and F2. Following his debut podium at the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, the young Aussie had this to say:

“I just wasn’t quick enough at certain points of the race. These high-deg races are probably the biggest thing I need to try and work on at the moment.

“It’s still quite fresh for me. In all the junior racing before this there are no races like this, so the only way you can learn from it is by just doing the races.”

Yet in Miami Oscar made a definite step forward, keeping Verstappen honest during the opening phase of the Grand Prix and it was Piastri who inspired Norris to believe the win was possible according to McLaren team boss Andreas Stella.

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Inspiration for Lando Norris

It was that early performance that galvanised Norris into believing he had a shot of victory once he got into the race lead. His performance in the race was again very strong,” Stella noted of Piastri.

“Lando said something really nice before; he said by looking at Oscar overtaking a Ferrari, he got like, wow, we are actually there.

“So, it was a realisation for Lando himself. And Oscar could keep a strong pace in the first stint.

“So, I think he comes out of [Miami] with this sort of convictions, which, especially in terms of race pace, is something that we wanted to improve, having looked at Japan, having looked at China.

“For me, he’s in a very strong place.”

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Ferrari stretch their lead

Norris’ win added to the points scored in the Sprint meant McLaren left Miami 28 points better off, though the Sprint disaster for Norris meant their rivals for P2 – Ferrari – increased their lead over McLaren by 8 points. However, given how well the upgrades performed on the MCL38, McLaren look now to be capable of challenging Ferrari in the upcoming European season.

Lando’s huge haul of points from his maiden F1 victory now sees him in joint fourth place in the drivers’ championship alongside Carlos Sainz – the other non Red Bull driver to win a race this year. Norris did though close the gap to Charles Leclerc who is currently in third and now just five points behind Sergio Perez in P2.

Team boss Zak Brown was asked whether Lando Norris new deal announced early this year was a result of hearing on the grapevine that Hamilton was leaving for Ferrari.

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Norris signed new deal last season

“We’d actually signed him at the end of the year, but we wanted to make the announcement with him back,” said Zak.

“So typically, we let our drivers after the end of the year and the team holiday party disappear, and we didn’t want to kind of do a paper press release.

“So I think a lot of people went ‘oh, just in the nick of time’, the reality was he had been signed for a couple of months.”

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Piastri calls for FIA clampdow

There was a magical moment at this year’s Miami Grand Prix which saw Lando Norris take his first victory in 110 F1 race starts. Martin Brundle described the reception for the British driver as unprecedented and he likened it to that received by Ayrton Senna when he won his home race in Brazil back in 1991.

A first time F1 winner is always a good occasion but Miami 2024 will also be remembered for ‘darker’ goings on, something McLaren’s Oscar Piastri believes needs stamping out of the sport…. READ MORE