A lot of unexpected during these qualifying sessions. George Russell putting in the fastest time in FP1 and Max Verstappen taking the top spot on the timesheet during FP2 and FP3. Ferrari showed good performance as well apart from Charles Leclerc’s crash during FP2. Both McLaren’s are out in Q1.

Let’s start with the RedBull: Perez, who qualified 1st in pole, and Verstappen, who ended up starting from the grid in 9th position. However, guess who moved up eight positions and won the Miami Grand Prix?

Let’s see the different approach to the track by the two team mates.

The difference across the circuit is more relevant than what the final gap shows.

Despite the top speed is very close, the 2 drivers shows a complete different balance on their cars. PER is more effective in the series of turns, maybe thanks to an higher downforce set-up, while

VER is leading on top speed, showing a different setup affecting the downforce.

As a result PER gain on continuous and close turn, while VER recover on the long straight, where he can achieve higher speed, but the big difference is created on turns from 11 to 16 and on Turn 17.

On Turn 6-7 VER needs to release throttle to close the turn, while PER can keep pushing, showing once more the different balance, and the enhanced ability across curves chosen by PER.

On turn 11 it seems VER is badly entering bends, maybe making a drive error loosing speed.

A difference set up on the same car is leading to have a complete different behaviour, showing diametrical opposite results.

     

Now let’s have a look at the Ferrari pilots. Sainz started in 4th position, and Leclerc in 7th. What has happened to Leclerc?

Now a close look to the two Ferrari and how the driver can push the car limit.

SAI is finishing the lap as best Ferrari driver, but he’s not always leading the internal fight.

SAI seems to be more effective on sharp turns, gaining good gap at turn 1, 11-12 and 17, while LEC seems more balanced and powerful across the series of turns from 4 to 9. In this section LEC is gaining a good gap on SAI, showing a pretty higher speed.  

On the straight line no driver is making the difference and the speed is pretty the same.

This shows a similar set-up of the car, and the driving style has the main role, and the difference at the end seems to be the result of a couple of errors LEC did in key area.

A first error, or bad reading of the circuit, happens at Turn 11, where LEC brakes too late, with the result of losing a good speed across the turns, and having a not nice path on the following turn, and the need to be slower than SAI. As a consequence SAI recover the gap that LEC created across the previous section of turns.

Here after LEC manage to recover the good trajectory on the track, and once more open up a gap with SAI across the following turns.

A second error is visible when preparing turn 17 and entering too fast with deep braking, going out from close trajectory, reducing too much the speed to close the turn and finally not being able to exit with the same speed for the final acceleration to the end line.

In this 1-to-1 race LEC is creating and destroying, probably less clean on the track and eventually giving the open way to SAI to be the best classified Ferrari driver.

SAI does a good job, more regular and consistent to know the limits of his Ferrari when turns close.

We need to highlight that anyway on turns RB shows more interesting speed records, creating anyway a gap with Ferrari.

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