What were Norris' chances of winning the F1 Miami Grand Prix?

In the immediate aftermath of the Miami Grand Prix, which Lando Norris led for most of the first stint before being undercut by the ultimately victorious Kimi Antonelli, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella initially concluded that pitstop timing was the key to losing out on potential victory.

Had Norris pitted before Antonelli, rather than a lap later, he would have had the advantage of hotter tyres when the Mercedes emerged from the pits, and would likely have won the ensuing arm-wrestle into Turns 2 and 3.

“Probably pitting earlier, he could have secured the lead position,” Stella told Sky Sports. “We will review that. There’s always opportunity when you go racing and it’s so tight.”

Hindsight always plays out with utmost clarity, but strategy is only one facet of the execution picture. And, critically, it’s always important to filter out hindsight when judging the quality of a strategic decision: each call has to be assessed based on what was known at the time, rather than what is known of the outcome.

Otherwise we’re in Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda territory.

With the benefit of more time to reflect, rather than being grabbed before the champagne has flowed, Stella added more context in his regular post-race press conference. His suggestion was that while McLaren has maintained its strength from last year in terms of the car being consistent on its tyres, Mercedes has the edge on pure pace because it still has more downforce – despite being one of the few teams not to add a major upgrade package for the Miami weekend.

Watch: 2026 Miami GP: Antonelli Triumphs in Miami

That added up to a different balance of performance characteristics over the lap, although the competitive picture had been muddled somewhat by Mercedes not executing as well as it could on Friday and some of Saturday.

As to the question of whether Norris could have won anyway, having seemed so comfortable in the lead once he seized it from Charles Leclerc after the early safety car deployment, there were other variables at play beyond the timing of the stop.

“When the things are so close, and when you have four teams in such a tight competition, execution, adaptation, optimisation, they can become the decisive factor,” explained Stella.  “And while we have had a very positive weekend, I think today in the race we might have lost the possibility to win it, again for a matter of execution and optimisation of what was available. We were fighting a faster car than us, but perhaps if we had kept Lando in the lead, we could have led it to the finish.

“If we go into the specifics of the race, when you are in the lead and you are in condition to retain the lead, like Lando was today in the first stint, then you definitely have a chance to win it. I think the timing of the pitstop was the decisive factor, but at the same time we should be careful that we don't only see it from a strategic point of view.

“Because you have the timing of the pitstop, which is a strategic element, but then we lost time in pitlane, for instance, which is an execution aspect. It is a combination of the driver stopping, the pitstop itself, and then we have the in-lap, and we lost some time in the in-lap as well.

“So it should not be confused with a strategic element. It is always a team element, and as a team we have done a great job in making McLaren competitive again for the win, and as a team, probably today we didn't capitalise – but as a team we shouldn't forget that we were competing with the faster competitors.”

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Ryan Pierse / Getty Images

Norris started fourth on the grid, but got a better start than polesitter Antonelli and benefited when both the Mercedes and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull speared off-track in the opening corners. He and Antonelli then made short work of passing Leclerc’s Ferrari to run 1-2 on lap 13, after the early safety car.

Although Norris pulled out a lead of up to three seconds, Antonelli began to narrow that gap as the lap count entered the 20s and the pit window approached, By lap 26, at the end of which Antonelli dived into the pits to swap his medium Pirellis for hards, the gap was fluctuating between 1.7s and 1.9s.

Norris pitted a lap later and emerged as Antonelli swept by the pit exit, having both the advantage of warmer tyres and the racing line into Turn 3 and the sweepers beyond. Once they cleared Verstappen, who had stopped during the safety car period and was now on much older tyres, Norris took seven laps to get within a second of Antonelli.

After six laps of being within a second, Norris dropped away and never got as close again. So, once Antonelli had pitted first, what could McLaren have done better?

“I think with the hard tyres it is very difficult to... Even if Lando was ahead at the pit exit, Antonelli is coming with the tyres hot, he is in his ideal racing line, so I don't think there was anything we could have done,” said Stella.

“We just should have put Lando much more further ahead, probably seven tenths of a second, let's say, and this would have given him the possibility to retain the position. We saw that the pitstop wasn't perfect, we lost time in pitlane, like I said before, we saw in the in-lap Lando had a couple of moments, so we knew the in-lap wasn't going to be very good, we knew that with Antonelli coming with hot tyres – it would have been very difficult, so it's a combination of factors that compound it.”

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sona Maleterova / Getty Images

The undercut isn’t especially powerful in Miami, so losses are largely a question of detail. In Antonelli’s pitstop, the car was stationary for 2.2s, while Norris was becalmed for 0.6s longer.

An examination of the data reveals the majority of Norris’s in-lap, while slightly sub-optimal, wasn’t actually that bad. Compared with the immediately preceding lap, Norris lost just over a tenth immediately when he had to back off the throttle further at the Turn 2 apex – coming to 25% rather than 40%, and being slightly later to apply it again.

That put him on the back foot at a circuit where mistakes tend to compound as drivers chase lap time. Being later on the brakes into Turn 7 forced him to stay on them a little longer, and get on the throttle later at the exit. That brought the deficit compared with the previous lap to 0.25s.

Lifting off and braking slightly later into Turn 11 didn’t eat into the deficit, which then grew through a scrappier Turns 12-16 to a peak of 0.394s. But then, on the back straight, Norris deployed much more electrical power, building to a peak of 326kph where he had begun to tail off after hitting 322kph on the previous lap.

So, even though he had to feather the throttle and roll the steering to quell an oversteer moment at Turn 18 before he lunged for the pitlane, Norris was almost even with his previous lap.

But Antonelli’s in-lap to the pits was clocked as 1m37.884s, Norris’ at 1m38.504s. The data indicates a very different balance of electrical deployment between the two, with Antonelli using more boost along the back straight towards Turn 11. This is where Antonelli made up his six tenths to set up the textbook undercut.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

Would the pit exit scenario have played out differently if the stationary time had been equivalent to Mercedes? And how much, if any, was gained or lost in the approach to the pitbox and the exit from it? These are just some of the questions McLaren will be asking in its Miami GP post mortem.

“I think we will review how much of the time lost in pitlane has to do with what we call the moving part, or the stationary part, which is the pitstop itself,” said Stella. “Certainly our pitstops today were not absolutely perfect, so we will have to see, but I think compared to an ideal pitstop, we lose a few tenths of a second in the stationary execution itself.

“I don't think it has to do with the moving bit, like the stopping and starting at the pitbox. I think at the moment it has to do mainly with the execution itself.”