01The Latest In Miami
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03Hot Stuff
Off track, the race around the Hard Rock Stadium is one of the most colourful, exciting and star-studded of the season and the atmosphere in the jam-packed paddock and in the grandstands is always electric. On track it’s just as high tempo, with the circuit seeing some of the highest speeds of the year and only bested by those at Monza, Baku and Mexico City. Meanwhile, the searing Florida sunshine makes Sunday’s race one of the toughest of the season. Add in the second Sprint weekend of the season and is set to be a scorcher, but when it comes together the results can be spectacular – as Max knows only too well.
Ready For Some Hard Rock Action© iStock
The defending champion won the inaugural race here in 2022 and the following year delivered a trademark battle through the pack to take the win after a mistake in qualifying left him ninth on the grid. Max also aced Miami’s first Sprint last year.
Victory For Max At Inaugural Race In Miami© Getty Images
On the other side of the garage, Yuki’s first two races here, with AlphaTauri, saw him finish on the cusp of the points but last year, with VCARB, he finally breached the top 10, taking a well worked seventh place in the race.
04Challenges and Key Factors
SprintWeekend
This is the second Sprint weekend of the season and once again that means there’s just a single practice session to nail set-up before Friday afternoon’s Sprint Qualifying session. Options exist to right any major set-up wrongs after the Sprint and ahead of qualifying for the race, but the pressure to find the right balance is always heightened on a Sprint weekend.
Weather
Miami in May is hot and humid, and drivers often reference the event as one of the most physically demanding all season. In 2022, Max likened it to being in the boxing ring and similar to Singapore in terms of energy-sapping heat. “It's very hot in Sector 2,” he said. “But of course because this is a day race it makes it really hot. So, I was very happy once we got to the straight because that gave you a bit of air.”
The forecast for the weekend is for strong sunshine and temperatures edging towards 30˚C but feeling five degrees hotter. It will once again be a punishing race.
05The Soft Parade
For the second race in a row (and the pattern will continue in Imola in a couple of weeks) Pirelli have moved a step softer in compound choice for this year’s Miami Grand Prix. And as with Jeddah, drivers will this weekend get the C3 as the hard, the C4 as the medium and the C5 as the soft tyre.
The shift is designed to push teams towards a more strategically interesting two-stop race in which different tyre regimes often provide a performance offset and as a result more overtaking.
Since its calendar debut in 2022, the race around the Hard Rock has resolutely been a one-stop affair. Even when Virtual and physical Safety Cars upset the end of the first stint last year, McLaren’s Lando Norris converted a medium-hard race – with a pit stop under the SC on lap 29 – into a first career win. The only driver to score points with a two-stop race in 2024 was Checo Pérez who opened on medium tyres, pitted for Hards on lap 17 and then ditched them for a used set of mediums under the SC on lap 28.
It was similar story in the opening two years. The inaugural race saw Max win from third P3 on the grid with a medium-hard race, stopping on lap 26, while in 2023 the Dutchman went for the opposite choice, with a stop for Mediums on lap 45 to take a brilliant win from ninth on the grid.
Will the softer compounds bring about a two-stop race? Due to the heat – last year the track temp hit 55˚C – MIA is a high thermal degradation track, but Pirelli’s 2025 compounds have been designed to suffer that less than last year’s, so there is a possibility teams will push tyre management to the top of the agenda and still target the quicker one-stop.
Meanwhile, in the Sprint, the medium was the tyre of choice with 18 of the 20 drivers, including for Max, who won with it from lights to flag. Expect the medium to again be the overwhelming choice.
06Miami International Autodrome Guide: Track Layout & Key Features
The Miami International Autodrome is a tricky circuit to get right, with its mix of long straights, flowing sections and that fiddly bit in the middle that everyone hates meaning that set-up is a delicate balancing act of outright speed for the big straights and good aero and traction out of the corners in the more technical sections.
The lap starts with the short blast to Turn 1 and then from T2 to T6 it’s fast and flowing with rapid changes of direction. That’s followed by the long arc through T7 and T8 (past the weird, dry marina) and then you’re on to a long run, with a couple of kinks, that leads all the way to the heavy braking zone of the T11 left-hander. There’s DRS after Turn 9 so it’s a good spot to make a move.
Turn 11 takes you into a fairly dissatisfying sequence of low-speed corners necessitated by the track’s proximity to the highway but once you’re freed from that tedium, you’re onto the 1.2km back straight and another dose of DRS leading up the heavy braking point of T17. The final DRS zone comes after T19 and then you’re across the line and blasting away again to Turn 1.
The surface was renewed in 2023, and the track is therefore very smooth. Rear sliding and overheating are always a risk.
07The Stats & Facts of Miami
- Max is the most successful driver in Sprint history, having won 11 of the 19 races ever held in the format. In this time, he has claimed nine poles and led exactly 200 laps - no other driver has led more than 42 laps.
- Yuki scored points in both the Sprint race and Grand Prix in Miami last season, finishing seventh in the race and eighth in the Sprint event.
- After finishing on the podium in Saudi Arabia, Max moved ahead of Sebastian Vettel into second on the all-time points table. His career tally of 3,110.5 points is only bested by Lewis Hamilton (4,983.5).
- Yuki's eighth-placed qualifying position alongside Max's pole in Jeddah gave the Team its best combined qualifying position since Azerbaijan last September.
- In the previous three editions, no driver has won starting from the front row. Max's win here in 2023 from ninth on the grid was the first victory from that starting position since the 1984 French Grand Prix.
