Africa-Press – South-Africa. Max Verstappen stole all the headlines en route to victory at the 2023 Miami Grand Prix. Starting in ninth place, the Red Bull driver had his work cut out as he clawed his way up the field.
And by Lap 15, he was already up into second place.
When teammate Sergio Perez pitted at the end of Lap 20, Verstappen inherited the lead and continued pulling a gap of more than 18 seconds. After his pit stop on Lap 46, Verstappen rejoined the race 1.2 seconds behind Perez, but he needed just one lap to relegate his teammate back to second.
“It was a good race, stayed out of trouble in the beginning, and yeah, had a clean race,” Verstappen said.
“I could stay out longer on the hard tyres, and that’s what made the difference. [Qualifying] was a setback, [but in the race], we kept it calm; we kept it clean. Winning from P9 is very satisfying.”
Analysing what went wrong
Unfortunately for Perez, he could not convert his third career pole position into a win. The driver put his poor showing down to the Medium tyre, bemoaning his struggles on the tyre. Unlike Verstappen who started the race on the Hard tyre, Perez failed to make the Medium tyre’s performance advantage work to his benefit.
“I gave it my all,” Perez said.
“The first stint was poor with the graining, and that compromised our race as we had too much of a difference on tyres. Well-deserved win from [Verstappen]. I think the Medium initially was really poor, worse than expected. I need to analyse what went wrong, as we had a bad race.”
While Perez is left licking his wounds, Fernando Alonso takes immense pride in his third-place finish for Aston Martin. The driver started in second place and hoped for a “boring” race to at least secure his starting position by the race’s end.
However, few could have predicted Verstappen’s immense climb up the order. Still, a podium finish is a massive achievement for the team, but Alonso admits that he thought either Ferrari or Mercedes – or both! – would have challenged him for third place.
He said: “The car is amazing, a bit of a lonely race. We did expect stronger opposition, but the Ferraris were worse than expected. We take the podium. And going into the triple-header, hopefully, we can keep on going. We want more, at least a second place, maybe Monaco, maybe Barcelona, we have a possibility.”
Next up is the Italian Grand Prix in Imola, on 19-21 May.
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