Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.
Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I am going to eat a $100 hot dog at the Miami Grand Prix. More on if I survive — and if the finance department doesn’t censor me — to come in Tuesday’s edition.
I’m Patrick, and Madeline Coleman will be along shortly. Let’s go. But first, if you haven’t already, please fill out our F1 fan survey!
Also, enjoy this no-context photo of F1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli, snapped by Madeline.
New Regs: And first stress test at Miami GP
The FIA announced a set of rule tweaks before Miami, covering four areas:
ERS deployment
Qualifying energy limits
Race start systems
The closing-speed problem that produced Ollie Bearman’s 50G-force crash at Suzuka
The goal is less lift-and-coast, less yo-yo racing, fewer moments where a driver accidentally overtakes someone because the battery had things to do. It’s something.
And also, depending on your driver of choice: “a tickle” (said by Max Verstappen), “not really much different on the sim” (Lewis Hamilton) and “a step in the right direction” (approximately every other driver in Miami on Thursday).
Oscar Piastri put it most plainly: You can’t actually fix the problem without changing the power unit hardware. Which is true! And also impossible to do between races! So here we are, applying the scalpel and hoping it’s enough.
Madeline has the full story on driver opinions here.
Miami is an interesting test case — teams have no recent data for how these cars behave here. They have a 90-minute practice session today, and then sprint qualifying, a sprint race, qualifying and a grand prix.
The circuit is also energy-rich with long straights. I thought it was notable in the news conference on Thursday that Isack Hadjar said: “I don’t think it’s a challenging track for the power units we have. I think it’s going to look good, but on some other tracks it’s definitely going to be harder. But let’s see tomorrow how it feels inside the car and we’ll know more.”
Two related housekeeping notes:
Friday’s practice has been extended to 90 minutes (from the usual 60) to help teams gather some of that information before sprint qualifying in the evening.
Rain is in the forecast for the race on Sunday. This is not a small thing: There’s currently an 88 percent chance of rain and a 53 percent chance of thunderstorms. U.S. law requires any major outdoor event to halt during a thunderstorm because the medical helicopter can’t fly.The drivers who’ve sampled these cars in the wet are not exactly reassuring. Antonelli drove one in the rain at Mercedes’ Silverstone shakedown and called it “very tricky.” Sainz flagged standing water on the flat track surface, visibility and the track’s narrowness, and said he hoped they could get clarity in the drivers’ briefing before Sunday.
Hadjar and Antonelli both raised the same concern independently: Intermediate tires have been almost impossible to bring up to temperature, meaning if there’s serious water, you’re going straight to full wets. Nobody has done that in competition yet.
So on top of everything else, we may be barreling toward a thicket of unknowns this weekend.
On driver opinions
There’s a pattern to how drivers are talking about the regulation tweaks, and it aligns so clearly with the constructors’ standings that I keep waiting for someone to point it out in a news conference and cause a diplomatic incident.
Here’s who said what:
George Russell (Mercedes, first in the constructors’ championship): Essentially said the FIA delivered on every specific complaint the drivers raised. “We’ve told them what we’re not happy about, and they’ve gone out and changed the regs, and they’ve achieved what we’ve asked,” he said.
But move down the order and the temperature shifts.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri (McLaren, third): Mixed. Norris was the most expansive on what drivers actually want (proper slipstreaming, cars on each other’s bumpers, yo-yo overtaking gone). But he’s realistic: You can’t ask manufacturers to absorb fundamental rule shifts mid-season when one team is running away with it. Piastri said that driver input probably “should be considered, but not solely.”
Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari, second): Said the drivers don’t have a seat at the table and it needs to change, and that every time they push for progress, it’s “small baby steps each time.”
Further back still: Pierre Gasly (Alpine, fifth) called it “not a game changer.” Carlos Sainz (Williams, ninth) said he doesn’t believe anyone will “come up with a magic bullet here that will suddenly change everything.” Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac, 10th) called it “quite a small step.”
And then there’s Lance Stroll (Aston Martin, last). He tested F3 cars over the break and said they were “a thousand times more fun and better to drive.” He addressed what we talked about last time with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali defending the regulations: that F1 is a business that wants to protect itself, that it’s happy that people are watching regardless, but that “the drivers, the fans, the people that really know about racing know what it was before.” He added: “Some guys can say it, some guys cannot say it.”
Lance Stroll, whose father owns his team, can certainly say it.
Miami GP: Today’s schedule
FP1: In today’s 90-minute free practice session, Charles Leclerc led the way at 1:29.310. He was followed by Verstappen and Piastri.
Sprint qualifying: 4:30 p.m. ET/9:30 p.m. UK
We’ll be live-blogging through it! Now here’s Madeline from the paddock.
Inside the Paddock with Madeline Coleman
Verstappen is still determining what his F1 future looks like, saying there’s “nothing new” about whether he’ll retire before his contract is up at the end of 2028. This also comes at a time when Verstappen is competing in more GT3 races, and has been highly critical of F1’s new technical regulations, calling the cars “anti-racing.”
He said about his future in Miami on Thursday: “Nothing new, to be honest, on that side. In those weeks, I’ve been busy with other things. I still have time and I’m taking my time.”
But the other question about his F1 future that arose during the April break was in regard to the news around his race engineer GianPiero Lambiase. He will be leaving his role at Red Bull for McLaren by 2028. Verstappen and Lambiase have worked together since 2016, and the Dutchman previously said that he wouldn’t want to work with anyone else.
Now? That’s changed. Verstappen recognizes he will have to work with someone else in order to drive.
“Also, times change and the offer that he got … I would be an idiot to try to keep him,” Verstappen said. “It’s not only about me all the time; it’s also about his career and moving forward. For me, it was a no-brainer, to be honest. And yeah, about the future, that’s what we’re looking at now with a different race engineer.”
Back to you, Patrick.
Hakuna Matata: The wunderkind leader
Mercedes leads, well, everything, as we rev up again. Antonelli has 72 points, Russell has 63, Leclerc has 49 and Hamilton has 41. In the constructors’, Mercedes has 135, Ferrari 90 and then there’s a long drop off for everyone else.
Now let’s talk about the 19-year-old leading all of it.
Antonelli opened his Miami news conference by asking the moderator, Tom Clarkson, how the London Marathon went. Not answering a question, asking one. Unprompted. Then Antonelli asked which shoes he wore for the marathon.
It wasn’t the behavior of a teenager stressed about leading the F1 world championship.
When someone eventually got around to asking him about being the youngest driver ever to lead the F1 championship, he gave a thoughtful, measured answer:
“I think I’m very well aware that it’s not going to be easy and that the pressure is going to be high, but I’m also aware that if I just focus on my things without worrying too much about the rest, then we can do great things together.”
He sounded like someone who has thought seriously about how not to think too seriously about things. It’s also very early in the season. The real pressure is months away. But for now, Antonelli sounds like he’s in a good headspace.
Outside the Points
🔧 Aston Martin took its car to Honda’s Sakura facility during the break and put it on a dyno — more sensors, more data, a better look at the vibration problem that’s been giving its drivers genuine nerve-damage fears since preseason. Honda says it found “good progress,” but nobody is expecting a Miami F1 miracle.
🏎️ It’s Cadillac’s first home race, and they’ve got a new floor, new front wing, new rear brake ducts and new rear suspension tracks. And its own fan grandstand, which I’m invading today. Luke has the full breakdown of its debut U.S. race here.
🍫 And, finally, Alex brought Madeline and me F1 Kit Kats yesterday. Don’t worry, we have reported him to the authorities.
📫 Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters.