John N
Formula 1 heads to Florida for the first time since 1959 this weekend as we prepare for the inaugural Miami Grand Prix. Here are the favorites for pole, points, podiums, and victory this weekend.
- Vying for pole
There’s no point talking about the previous form at the all-new 5.41km Miami International Autodrome track because there isn’t any. So instead, as we comb through the qualifying form of the season so far, we see that Red Bull and Ferrari have two poles each – Charles Leclerc having taken both of the Scuderia’s in Bahrain and Australia, while Sergio Perez in Jeddah, then Max Verstappen at Imola, claimed Red Bull’s poles.
As Mattia Binotto recently predicted, the momentum is swinging to and fro between Ferrari and Red Bull this year. But one driver who’ll be keen to get his first-ever pole position on the board this weekend.
Data suggest that the Spaniard’s ideal lap in the dry at Imola would have been good enough for pole – but a Q2 crash there, coming on the back of an issue in Australia that he felt cost him pole, means he remains the only driver in the top two teams yet to net a P1 this year.
- In the mix for victory
Similarly, wins have been divided 50/50 between Ferrari and Red Bull in 2022, but only between two drivers: Leclerc in the red corner, and reigning champion Verstappen in the blue. As for who the Miami International Autodrome should suit, the track features a broad spread of low-, medium-, and high-speed corners, and it’s hard to say which team will have an advantage over the other. Perhaps the one thing in Ferrari’s favor is that their car seems to be easy to handle, which could be an advantage at a circuit where teams have no concrete data on which to rely.
Again, this will be a weekend where Sainz looks to bring himself into play in the fight for victory, having crashed out on Lap 2 in Australia and Lap 1 at Imola-while Perez, too, will be hungry to stand on the top step of the podium for the first time since Baku last year.
- Points Potential
Podium outsiders McLaren are the ones to watch here; Lando Norris has been backed to shine by Team Principal Zak Brown, and Daniel Ricciardo has started scoring too, helping the squad pick up a very healthy 22 points at Imola. Alfa Romeo will expect to be towards the front of the midfield, the fifth-place squad hoping to squeeze even more out of those upgrades.
The points battle continues to be seriously close, and while Alpine will be expecting points this weekend, they will be looking in the mirrors at the likes of Aston Martin, who broke their duck at Imola and managed a double-points finish to boot.
Haas, the only American team on the grid, looks set to continue to be in the mix on home soil – Mick Schumacher aiming to score his first-ever points in F1 and join Kevin Magnussen as a regular scorer – while AlphaTauri will be eager to bounce back after a slightly rocky home weekend last time out.
The infamously temperamental Miami weather could throw things into chaos this weekend. And that means every driver will be looking to capitalize.
- Podium outsiders
As it has been throughout much of 2022, here’s the category in which we’ll mention eight-time constructors’ champions Mercedes, who’ve scored just two podiums in four races so far – although George Russell does at least have the honor of being the only driver on the grid to have finished in the top five at every Grand Prix so far this season.
Ahead of the Miami weekend, Toto Wolff was buoyant about the progress the team had made post-Imola (where Russell finished P4, as Lewis Hamilton took P13), saying Mercedes had “found several directions for improving the car, and we will be conducting experiments in Miami to correlate those simulations. It’s worth mentioning Alfa Romeo appeared to take a step forward at Imola thanks to a re-design on the rear end of the C42 – a botched pit stop seemingly the only thing that prevented Valtteri Bottas from challenging for a podium in Italy.
The driver he’d have been challenging was Lando Norris, who secured the first podium for a non-Red Bull/Ferrari/Mercedes driver this year – with the Briton and McLaren tteammateDaniel Ricciardo hoping to reinforce McLaren’s upward trajectory in Florida.
