The three factors that mean Norris's Miami F1 win can't be cast as a safety car fluke

He stank of champagne. Lando Norris, bouncing into the press conference room in the bowels of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, was soaked in Formula 1 glory.

After taking a famous first grand prix win in Miami’s third race weekend, he’d wanted “to keep all my champagne on me”. A quick Lewis Hamilton-style change to a more glamourous outfit was eschewed; Norris resplendent in the already sweat-steeped overalls he’d worn for 57 boiling laps last Sunday.

For 31 of those tours, he led. As he crossed the line to finally take the chequered flag at the head of an F1 pack after 124 attempts – sprints and all – he clinched McLaren’s first GP win since that famous day Norris had backed off behind Daniel Ricciardo at Monza in 2021. His Sochi near miss to Hamilton next time out was 57 race weekends back. Oscar Piastri’s triumph in the Qatar sprint barely seven months ago.

Norris selected that moment as the “one opportunity” to win he’d definitively missed in all that time since the 2021 Russian GP. But it was another moment involving his team-mate that went a long way to securing this long-awaited victory.

The mid-race safety car swung the contest irreversibly in Norris’s favour – that cannot be denied. But there were three additional factors that combined to make Norris a victory contender even without fate finally shining back on him 952 days since the Sochi sun had disappeared in that devastating rainstorm.

1. Piastri’s Leclerc pass proves pivotal

The driver that had the second-highest Miami GP laps led total, inevitably, was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. He ended the day with 22 tours at the head of the pack. But for just the fifth time in the last 29 F1 weekends, he didn’t lead the last. And he nearly didn’t reach the end of the first, too.

Verstappen, starting from his second pole of the weekend, shot clear off the line – swinging right when the lights went out. This turned out to be unnecessary, as his front row partner Charles Leclerc was slow away. As the Ferrari hit wheelspin “as soon as I let [off] the clutch”, per Leclerc, Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull stole to the far right close to the pitwall Donald Trump had plodded by just minutes earlier, then braked tight on the inside.

Perez came inches away from slamming into Verstappen at the first corner

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

But like Hamilton in the sprint, Perez found “offline there was no grip and I ended up locking” and slid straight on. Perez, who was cleared of a false start after he appeared to possibly be over the yellow line at the front of his grid box, came so close to wiping out his team-mate.

In fact, Verstappen said afterwards he’d spotted “a scratch on my diffuser” he put down to Perez. But he might have been seeing something else rather important, that we’ll get, too.
Having missed Verstappen, Perez’s mighty momentum forced Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari and Norris to check up on the outside line – the former having to move so much he wanted Perez penalised. The momentum Sainz and Norris lost meant Leclerc recovered back to second, while Piastri powered through in the ensuing sweeps to run third.

Verstappen ended lap one with a 1.4-second advantage – Leclerc already missing DRS. Then the Ferrari was soon starting to slide and this contributed to Verstappen’s lead creeping up to 1.8s by lap three’s end and foreshadowed what was to come for Leclerc.

The next time by, Piastri, who had been armed with DRS behind since it activated on lap two, made his move. He sent it up the inside from a fair way back at Turn 17 at the end of the back straight and set off after Verstappen, who ahead had just locked up at the tight right-hander. Leclerc clung on in front of Sainz, although more regularly wayward than his team-mate.

"His race management was very mature. As soon as he saw there wasn't much to do after the first lap, he started to save his tyres because he knew his race would come" Andrea Stella on Lando Norris

Sainz indicated he wanted to be allowed by, but Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur – who would charmingly gate-crash McLaren’s post-race celebration picture on the stadium’s NFL field to soak Norris in yet more champagne – said nothing of this afterwards.

Piastri’s pass actually brings two subplot elements into play for Norris’s win. One was how Norris saw “Oscar overtaking a Ferrari”, per team McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, and so “he got like, 'Wow, we are actually there today'.” Incentivised by his team-mate’s efforts 4.3s and four places ahead – Perez having rejoined from Turn 1 in front of Norris – the Briton was also driving in a manner that would later pay him back critically.

“His race management was very mature,” Stella said of Norris’s efforts at this point. “As soon as he saw there wasn't much to do after the first lap, he started to save his tyres because he knew his race would come.”

Once Perez pitted Norris went on the attack to hunt down those ahead

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

But by lap 14, with Verstappen 2.8s to the good over Piastri up ahead, Norris was all over Perez’s rear. At this moment, the eventual winner was 8.2s off the lead.

Norris pressured Perez, but in the end, Red Bull made things easier for him by calling the Mexican in to move off the medium tyres all the frontrunners had started on and take hards. This was lap 17, after which Norris was instructed to “go after him [Sainz] rather than protect against Perez” by his engineer Will Joseph – a call Norris agreed with readily.

Leclerc came in two laps later having been repeatedly instructed to decide on coming in in the opposite way to Piastri, who’d not been able to move clear of DRS range to the pursuing Ferraris. The first time Leclerc was told to “box oppositive McLaren”, he was then ordered to stay out by his engineer Xavier Marcos.

When he did stop, Leclerc rejoined between the Mercedes pair on their split strategies and not a factor in the lead fight. Ahead, Piastri had moved 3.4s clear of Sainz – the early leaders all upping their pace in the expectation they’d soon all be on the hards.

Before Verstappen made that change on lap 23, the second more important factor in Norris’s victory challenge arrived.

2. Verstappen’s chicane mistake has consequences

On the 21st tour, Verstappen clattered into the Turns 14/15 chicane, having had his RB20’s rear snap sideways as he hit the first part’s apex. Verstappen knocked off the orange kerb marker bollard inside the sequence’s second part, which actually made its way through his RB20 before falling out from underneath the rear wing as he rounded Turn 16 and headed onto the long back straight.

The bollard rolled onto the racing line first when Piastri swept by and so race control activated the virtual safety car system on lap 23 because of its ongoing perilous position. The massive gap between Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas at the rear of the field meant there was enough time for a marshal to pluck up the damaged cone and clear the scene.

Verstappen picked up an unwanted passenger after hitting a bollard

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

For a moment, this might have handed Verstappen a big-time advantage, but the clearance was so rapid the leader was only running through Turn 16 again when the VSC ended. Nevertheless, Red Bull called him in at the end of that tour to make his hards switch.

After this, through all that was to come, Verstappen felt his handling on the white-walled rubber “was quite a disaster”. He put this down to never really feeling “comfortable the whole weekend” with his car balance on any compound.

“Just low grip, just very tricky balance in the low-speed,” he said of his second stint. “I couldn't really lean on the rear, while in the high-speed I was understeering a lot. So, when you have these two issues, you cannot also balance it out because you're chasing two different things. [I was] just driving to the grip that I had and it was not a lot.”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner explained post-race that the kerbstrike and bollard bashing had “actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car”.

"I've not done many safety car restarts from the front for a good amount of years. Yeah, just a bit rusty!" Lando Norris

“It was a reasonable amount of the area around the left-rear floor [that was damaged],” Horner added. “There’s a reasonable amount that's missing and you can see it awfully flexing as well, so it certainly wouldn't be helping [Verstappen’s handling balance].”

When Horner’s comments were put to Verstappen in the post-race press conference, where he’d begun by auto-piloting himself into the winner’s seat before laughing off his gaffe charmingly, the Dutchman disagreed on the assessment.

“It didn't feel different, so I don't know,” he replied, his expression souring with each word.
But in Red Bull’s post-race press release, Verstappen, who by the time this was drafted had completed his engineering debrief, conceded: “When we took the car back to the garage, we also found that the floor was damaged and had a hole in, which could have been picked up from hitting the cone.”

The Dutch driver had a wounded Red Bull - not that he knew it at the time

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

When Verstappen was starting his ‘disastrous’ second stint, Piastri was scooping up this GP’s other four leading laps, before he led Sainz – from 2.7s ahead – into the pits to get their hard tyres.

And so, finally, Norris led. But it was what happened next that transformed the race’s narrative. On lap 28, Kevin Magnussen attacked Logan Sargeant at Turn 1 over 18th place. The Williams driver defended on the inside and the pair raced around Turn 2. Magnussen still hadn’t given up the fight and when his American rival swung right, the inevitable contact pitched Sargeant off backwards and into retirement in the barriers behind Turn 3.

The real safety car was called out this time, with Norris just past the pit entry when the neutralisation was called. But the 24-year-old, repeatedly forgetting to turn his radio off to the deadpan Joseph at this stressful moment, was able to come in the next time by. The minimum delta speed proscribed by the suspended conditions meant his near 20s lead over Verstappen was preserved.

Norris could even pit for his hards and rejoin ahead of the safety car, which then picked up Verstappen and co before waving them past and ensuring Norris didn’t gain a lap inadvertently.

Thankfully, that meant there was still a contest to be won, with Norris leading Verstappen back up to racing speed at the start of lap 33.

He hit the gas at the Turn 18 kink the drivers don’t even recognise as a real corner, which given Red Bull’s typical straightline prowess meant Verstappen had plenty of time to mount an attack on Turn 1’s outside line, as Norris defended the inside.

“I've not done many safety car restarts from the front for a good amount of years,” Norris later said of this. “Yeah, just a bit rusty! As long as I defended well into Turn 1 and kept the lead in Turn 1, I was quite confident I could go from there.”

And that’s exactly what he did. “I had to push fairly hard just for a lap,” Norris said of how he broke DRS range to Verstappen on the restart tour. “And then I could kind of relax a little bit.

Norris defended from Verstappen at the restart and pulled away with ease

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“I had fresher tyres [six-lap younger hards], my pace was very good in clean air and Max for the first time all race was not in clean air, so I had the advantage and I could control things fairly well.

“I pushed for the first bit, my engineer was giving me updates on the gap and I felt like I was cruising and extending the gap and I didn't feel like I had to do anything more. I didn't have to push too much [from] the first lap or two [after the restart tour] and then I could kind of cruise and be fairly comfortable. [But] I was still pushing because I wanted to open the gap.”

In the end, that winning margin sat at 7.6s – with Norris explaining that he hadn’t followed through on a final tour fastest lap attempt he’d considered because “I was imagining Andrea on the pitwall, like, ‘No, Lando, please!’.”

Leclerc chased Verstappen home gamely, with Sainz fourth on the road but penalised and boosting Perez ahead for his second clash with Piastri that dropped the Australian down the order.

"Once we made the pitstop, and I heard what lap times the McLarens were doing, I was like, ‘Wow, that's pretty quick’" Max Verstappen

But could Norris have won even without the safety car’s help?

3. Norris had Verstappen-bothering pace even without assistance

This is an interesting question. Norris’s MCL38 had the full complement of major updates McLaren had brought to Miami – remembering that awful run here 12 months ago with the first iteration of the MCL60.

The extra “downforce we added” with these new parts, according to Stella, provided enough of a boost that the orange team felt it “needed to be less demanding from a rear wing point of view, which is never too efficient”, again per Stella, on a track with such a corner and straights combination.

Stella, wearing a pin honouring late McLaren sporting director, advisor and 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner Gil de Ferran, revealed in the paddock post-race his team had also “consciously decided to set up the car to maximise low-speed performance, so the decent performance we had in low-speed is not necessarily because of the characteristic of the package”. Really, the MCL38 still doesn’t like such stuff.

Norris's maiden triumph was also Stella's first as McLaren team principal

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Along with the Red Bull’s damage and older tyres, this all explains how Norris was able to tear into Verstappen on his 24-lap run to home – mainly with gains in the opening sector and then essentially matching or pull away further through the lap’s remaining thirds.

But what is just as important to any consideration of Norris’s victory potential without the safety car intervening is his pace from much earlier in the race.

“We were pulling away, but not like it should be,” Verstappen said of his time in the lead on the mediums, which Piastri had been notably able to peg around the three-second mark before the Red Bull’s service.

“Once we made the pitstop, and I heard what lap times the McLarens were doing, I was like, ‘Wow, that's pretty quick’…”

Indeed, Norris’s times on mediums that had done 23 laps were on average 0.25s quicker than Verstappen could manage with new hards.

“He was so comfortable,” Stella said of Norris’s pace pre-safety car. “He kept saying, 'Guys, I’m good, the tyres are good, stay calm, keep going'.

“So, I think it would have been very interesting to see how long we could have gone, but there were no plans to pit as long as he was able to achieve green sectors and as long as his lap times were competitive with the people that had pitted on hards. [Plus], if you have 25-lap younger tyres, you are in condition to seriously attack the cars ahead even if overtaking is difficult.”

This is a big factor against why Norris cannot automatically be considered a victory contender without the safety car appearing. As Horner put it: “There wasn't a huge amount of overtaking in the race, certainly in the top 10, so it would have all depended on where he came out after his pitstop, which would have been third or fourth.”

The McLaren looked after its tyres incredibly well in Miami which allowed Norris to push when he needed to

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

That would’ve meant overtaking “two Ferraris, a Red Bull, Oscar”, reflected Norris. He added: “It would have been tough.”

But as his average advantage might have continued for another 25 laps, as Pirelli sources indicated the medium was capable of lasting competitively for a total of 50 on this low-degradation surface, Norris likely would have come close to erasing the gap Verstappen had to the eventual winner before he pitted and the race then so changed. Even an earlier stop would likely have still meant he emerged second, with enough pace to chase down the triple world champion.

Plus, there would’ve been a massive tyre life offset factor and a hobbled Red Bull. Enough for this to surely go down as a first F1 victory taken, not automatically given.

Verstappen had no complaints about losing out to Norris under the safety car

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images