The Miami Grand Prix has been billed as a season reset. For some it’s certainly delivered.
Mercedes had been unstoppable over the first three races, especially in qualifying. But now customer team McLaren has taken its place, with Lando Norris beating Andrea Kimi Antonelli to pole.
It was a statement result from the defending world champion and his constructors championship-winning team: don’t count us out yet.
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McLaren, though, wasn’t the only big mover in the sprint qualifying field. With most teams bringing substantial upgrades, the 2026 season suddenly looks different — and closer — than it did just a month ago.
SPRINT QUALIFYING: ‘Pretty woeful’ Lando bounces back as McLaren’s ‘perfect’ response catches F1 rival by surprise
Sprint Pole qualifier Lando Norris of Great Britain and McLaren with his Pirelli Sprint Pole award during Sprint Qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami.Source: AFP
McLAREN UPGRADES DO IT AGAIN
McLaren warned it was bringing what amounted to an all-new car to Miami.
It’s not the first time in recent years the team has gambled on a big upgrade around this time of the season, but this is the first time it’s taken this approach under these regulations. Could the team pull it off again under an unfamiliar rule book?
On the evidence of the first competitive session with its new package, the answer is emphatically yes.
McLaren had been on average 0.612 seconds slower than Mercedes over the first three rounds of the season.
Norris stormed to sprint pole with a 0.222-second advantage over Antonelli, a remarkable turnaround.
“I’m very happy for the team of course,” said the sprint pole-getter. “It’s always a lot of expectation.
“A lot of work’s gone into trying to bring these upgrades, and it’s always difficult to anticipate and to know what to expect coming into a new weekend, but since lap 1, literally turn 1, everything has felt better.
“It felt a little bit more like last year, with just having some confidence in the car, and I felt like I exploited that through the whole day today.
“It’s probably better than we were expecting, honestly. We were expecting [it would be] better of course, but we didn’t know in terms of quantity how it was going to be, so a little surprise, but a pleasant one for sure.”
Norris even suggested that there was more to come from McLaren given the magnitude of the car changes.
“If we were this quick in quali, normally you’d expect to continue that into long runs,” he said. “It’s still a new car for us. We’re still learning things on the go. We’re still trying to exploit things.
“I’m sure we’ll make some improvements tomorrow into qualifying, but for now I’m happy.”
Oscar Piastri was a close pole contender but lost most of his eventual 0.239-second deficit down the straight between turns 8 and 11, where he appeared to lack top speed relative to Norris, presumably due to having less battery charge — which was likely down to different approaches to turn 7-8.
“I think the car had great potential today, which was really nice to see,” Piastri said. “My lap in SQ3 didn’t feel the best, so to have turned up third is a good effort, and obviously for Lando a good result too.
“I’m happy with the work the team have done, and a little bit more room to improve for myself.”
It was telling, though, that he remained cautious about Mercedes’s relatively lack of competitiveness.
“They’ve not looked quite as dominant this weekend so far, so we’ll see if that stays true into tomorrow,” he said. “I think we all expected Mercedes to still be the benchmark, so let’s wait and see for tomorrow first.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO MERCEDES?
George Russell is rarely lost for words, but the Briton was stunned when he climbed out of his car after qualifying sixth for the Miami sprint.
He’s the first Mercedes driver to fail to qualify on the front row for any session this season.
Between him and pole-getter Norris sit teammate Antonelli, Piastri, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen — at least one driver from every other frontrunning team.
He was 0.624 seconds off sprint pole and a chunky 0.402 seconds slower than his teammate.
“Pretty surprising how big a jump McLaren and Ferrari have made,” he said. “That’s pretty damn impressive.
“We knew they’d probably close the gap, but they’ve been quicker than us.
“My side I’ve been struggling today. Miami is not a track that I love, to be honest, especially these hotter conditions, but it’s only sprint qualifying, so let’s see what tomorrow brings.
“I was struggling to get the right balance with the car. Not much more to say than that really. I’ve just been quite surprised by the progress of the others.”
Mercedes driver George Russell of Britain responds to a question during a news conference ahead of the Miami Formula One Grand Prix.Source: AP
What’s behind the sudden dip?
Mercedes is an outlier this weekend as one of few teams not to bring massive upgrades, having listed two new parts for Miami. Only Audi (two), Haas (one) and Aston Martin (zero) have brought similarly small packages.
McLaren, on the other hand, listed seven new parts, as did Red Bull Racing. Ferrari named 11 upgraded pieces.
“We were expecting this weekend to be quite a bit tougher, also because those teams [ahead], everyone brought major upgrades,” Antonelli said. “Obviously they closed the gap massively or even went in front of us.
“The McLarens have got the same [power unit] as us and improved a lot the car, so it was expected for them to be at the front.”
There’s also an interesting suggestion from the telemetry that McLaren is using its Mercedes power unit more effectively — deploying more energy earlier in the lap but without paying a price later in the lap. You can bet Mercedes will be studying the engine data especially closely tonight.
Antonelli was optimistic he was closer to the front than the results made it look, having had an engine problem in practice that prevented him from sampling the soft tyre until his sole crack at pole in SQ3.
“As a team we did a great job on recovering,” he said. “Now we look forward to tomorrow. Definitely we’ll dig deep tonight to see what we can do better in order to be faster tomorrow.
“I think we can be in the fight. That’s what we’re going to try to do tomorrow and on Sunday as well.”
FERRARI FLAT AFTER UPGRADE UNDERPERFORMANCE
Ferrari hopes were high that an extensive and effective aero upgrade could begin compensating for the engine’s relative lack of power to Mercedes in Miami.
Charles Leclerc got the most out of it and qualified fourth — his same starting position for all three grands prix so far.
Ferrari was the third-quickest car, just as it has been at the end of every weekend so far.
It looked like a lot of work for no momentum.
That’s not to say there was no progress. At 0.37 seconds off sprint pole, it’s the closest Ferrari has been to P1 all season. It’s just that it’s still not enough to make it onto the front row.
“The upgrades are fine; it’s just that everybody brought upgrades,” said a downcast Leclerc, who added he didn’t think the competitive picture has changes much at all despite Norris’s pole.
“McLaren did a very big step forward, but I feel like they didn’t really optimise their first races of the season, so they were always there but didn’t put everything together.”
Lewis Hamilton — who qualified seventh and 0.379 seconds behind Leclerc, thanks largely to time lost down the back straight and at the final turn 17 hairpin — said the team nonetheless expected more from the extensive package.
“I’d hoped that we would be better, but the car didn’t feel particularly great,” he said.
“I thought we’d be stronger than we were today. We’ve got to do some work overnight to try and figure out why we’re not that quick.
“I was hopeful, coming in positive, that we were going to be much higher, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Ferrari has looked more competitive in practice and even in SQ2, which Leclerc topped, but it couldn’t kick on in the pole shootout, which seemed to be down to an inability to get the soft tyres around the lap intact. Drivers used the softs for only around 15 minutes at the end of practice and weren’t allowed to use them again until SQ3.
Perhaps Ferrari’s underperformance relative to expectations just a function of the sprint weekend. Certainly the team will hope so — and hope it can right that wrong in grand prix qualifying tomorrow.
RED BULL RACING’S SIGNS OF LIFE
Red Bull Racing can breathe a small sigh of relief after seeing its own extensive upgrade package deliver a big step forward, even if it doesn’t yet look like enough to really mix in at the front.
In a car that is clearly visually different — including with its own take on Ferrari’s rollover rear wing — Verstappen qualified fifth and 0.592 seconds off the pace.
It’s the first time since Melbourne that Red Bull Racing has been one of the four fastest cars over a single lap.
“It feels more together,” Verstappen said. “Of course there are still things we are working on, but it’s been a really positive step for us.
“I would say we’ve almost halved that gap now, so that’s positive.”
The numbers bear that out. On average at the first three circuits the RB22 has been 1.156 seconds off top spot, almost exactly twice as distant as it was in Miami.
“We were still very weak in the first sector, which is mainly high speed, so we know that we need to work on that, but the rest seemed a bit more together,” Verstappen continued. “I’m a bit happier with that. At least it seems like we have cleared a little bit the midfield.
“It’s still not where I want it to be obviously, but it’s at least allowing me to trust it a bit more, and I can take a bit more lap time out of it.”
The layout is playing a little into Red Bull Racing’s hands here, for while the car is clearly weakest in those high-speed corners in the first sector — Verstappen loses around half a second alone though there — it’s also slower through the tighter corners at the far end of the track. It only makes up time down the straights, in particular the run to turn 11.
A more complex track with more turns and fewer long straights would presumably see that gap expand.
But Miami isn’t enough of an outlier for that to be a huge asterisk. This is still an improvement, and given the dire start to the season, Red Bull Racing will gladly take it.
FIA MISS COSTS LAWSON AN SQ2 SPOT
Williams is confident it’s making progress, and two cars in SQ2 was a positive sign — until Alex Albon was demoted from 14th to 19th for exceeding track limits.
Albon ran off the road at turn 6 on his fastest SQ1 lap, but he evaded FIA detection and was allowed to start SQ2.
It wasn’t until the end of SQ2 that the stewards noted the incident, and it wasn’t until after qualifying had finished that Albon was retrospectively punished, dropping him to 19th, where he would have qualified had the lap been deleted at the end of SQ1.
It was bad news for Liam Lawson, who was knocked out 17th and missed his rightful chance to compete for a higher grid spot.
“I think they realised too late and, because he’d already gone out on track,” Lawson said. “I honestly can’t understand how that’s possible.”
It’s not the first time an incident like this has been missed until after the fact, and it’s certainly not the first time the stewarding process has taken too long to come up with a time-sensitive decision.
There’s always a lot more going on in the stewards office than is made obvious by the investigation messages in the broadcast, and officiating is one of those thankless tasks — no-one notices you when things are going smoothly, but mistakes are painfully obvious.
But the FIA also instituted with great fanfare a remote operations centre in 2022 that it said would serve as the extra resource required to ensure the stewards could be across more incidents in more detail. The governing body also instituted a new AI model in its stewarding program just this season specifically for track limits violations.
That this is over 14th on the grid makes it a low-profile miss but no less important given the difficulty of scoring points for midfield teams.