{"id":563181,"date":"2026-05-02T23:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/563181\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T23:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:41:09","slug":"miami-grand-prix-kimi-antonelli-on-pole-ahead-of-max-verstappen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/563181\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Grand Prix: Kimi Antonelli on pole ahead of Max Verstappen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Antonelli secured his pole with his first run in final qualifying, and a mistake on his final run meant he faced an anxious wait to see if anyone could improve his time.<\/p>\n

But only Verstappen, who was third fastest on the first runs, managed to go faster on a second attempt in the 33C Miami heat.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old, who was demoted from fourth to sixth in the sprint by a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits, said: “It has been an amazing day to be on pole again.<\/p>\n

“It was a difficult start to the day with the sprint but super-happy with the recovery. I got a little bit excited on the final lap of Q3 but the first lap was good enough. I was very stressed just waiting for everyone to finish their laps.”<\/p>\n

Red Bull, like McLaren and Ferrari, brought a major upgrade to their car for this weekend, and while McLaren’s worked well early on, refinements from Red Bull and Mercedes left the sprint winners trailing.<\/p>\n

Verstappen, who has been considering his future in Formula 1,<\/a> said “there’s light at the end of the tunnel” after his team’s improvements.<\/p>\n

“To be on the front row after being over a second behind is really incredible. It’s massive.<\/p>\n

“It is everything because before nothing really worked, I felt like a total passenger. It could understeer, it could snap on me. <\/p>\n

“We are still not where we want to be in terms of understanding everything, but the car feels a lot more together and I can finally drive the way I want to drive.”<\/p>\n

Verstappen’s team-mate Isack Hadjar, who had had a promising start to his Red Bull career, was left trailing, 0.825secs adrift of the Dutchman in ninth. He said he had been struggling with a lack of power all weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Antonelli secured his pole with his first run in final qualifying, and a mistake on his final run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-563181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}