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2022 CRYPTO.COM MIAMI GRAND PRIX WEEKEND RECAP

 May 10, 2022

That’s it! Just like that, the very first Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix is over. While this race wasn’t my favorite (I still believe that the United States doesn't know how to do Formula 1), the weekend had some good battles, results, and laughs. So after a full weekend of racing, it’s time to debrief on what happened! 


Free Practice:

All 20 drivers headed out on Friday afternoon for Free-Practice 1. This would be the first time they drove the Miami International Autodrome, and there was a lot to be done. Since there wasn’t much information about the track, teams would have to try to gather as much data as they could in the next three practice sessions. 


Free Practice 1 -- 5/6/2022

  • Charles Leclerc went P1 on the soft compound tire, setting the first benchmark time for this new track. His Ferrari teammate, Carlos Sainz, ended up P6 after suffering a puncture due to oversteer into Turn 1. Oversteer is when the car turns more than the driver wants it to, and it can lead to major lock ups in tires when the driver tries to regain control of the car. These lock ups damage tires, and in Carlos Sainz’s case, cost him the rest of FP1.

  • George Russell finished P2 for Mercedes; 0.071 seconds behind Leclerc. As I wrote in my Miami prep post, Mercedes was introducing new upgrades during this weekend’s race. These upgrades include a rear wing that allows for low downforce and a revised front wing, and they seem to be working! There’s a chance Mercedes’ pace will be back soon! 

  • Defending World Champion, Max Verstappen finished FP1 in P3 after skimming barriers at Turn 16. He ended up spending a majority of his remaining practice time in the garage after the incident. However, Red Bull seems to be doing really well in Miami. Even with Verstappen’s tango with the barriers (I’m channeling my inner Crofty), he still was only 0.179 seconds off of Leclerc’s pace; and his teammate, Sergio Perez, finished P4!

  • Pierre Gasly, already on his 3rd internal combustion engine of the season, ended up in P5 for AlphaTauri! Yuki Tsunoda, the other AlphaTauri, finished P18 after he clipped the wall at Turn 16, similar to the way Verstappen did. 

  • Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo crashed at the marina section of the track, ending his practice session. He lost control of the car, spun, and ended up with the rear of his car damaged after a collision with the wall. Even then, he still managed to finish P17!


Valtteri Bottas crashed into the barriers during FP1


Free-Practice 2 -- 5/6/2022

Friday evening’s second practice session started with only 19 drivers going out onto the track as Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo was still being worked on after his FP1 crash.

  • George Russell – or GEORGEEEEEEE as Alex Albon, my friend, and I like to call him – topped the charts by finishing FP2 in P1. Lewis Hamilton managed to get P4 for his Mercedes, proving that the new upgrades are helping the car’s performance.

  • Charles Leclerc, 0.106 seconds slower than Russell, finished the second practice session in P2. Carlos Sainz brought out a red flag after spinning and crashing into Turn 14. This is the entrance into the chicane, where the barriers are made of cement. Sainz’s car was damaged and his FP2 session was over. The lap times he set prior to the crash got him up to P11.


Carlos Sainz hops out of his car after crashing into the barriers during FP2

  • Even after a few spins into the track’s runoff area, Sergio Perez was able to put his Red Bull in P3. The other Red Bull of Max Verstappen had to go back to the pits and was eventually taken out of FP2 after a steering issue. Verstappen struggled with stiff, almost unmanageable steering, and eventually had smoke coming out of his rear brake duct. It was later found out that this was due to a hydraulics issue, but Verstappen’s RB18 spent FP2 in the garage and the Dutchman was unable to set a time for the session.


Max Verstappen faced hydraulics issues during FP2

  • Our favorite Haas drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher finished P10 and P15; Schumacher being seven-tenths behind Magnussen.

  • Nicholas Latifi brought out the second red flag of the session after he suffered a technical issue and had to pull over to the side of the track. Come on Latifi, this can’t happen in the race! We need to get those points!


Free-Practice 3 -- 5/7/2022

All 20 drivers were back and at it again on Saturday morning, practicing and working with their teams to find the best set up before Qualifying that afternoon.

  • Sergio Perez put his Red Bull up in P1 with a lap time of 1:30:304s. After locking up into the chicane, Max Verstappen had to abandon a fast lap and settled for P3. 

  • Charles Leclerc went P2 again, while Carlos Sainz finished P6 after focusing on long stints, rather than fast lap times.

  • Alpine did not have a very great FP3. Esteban Ocon sustained a 51G crash at Turn 14, exactly where Sainz crashed in FP2. While he was ok and medically cleared to continue racing, the chassis of the car was cracked and Ocon was ruled out of qualifying because the car wouldn’t be fixed in time. Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon, and many other drivers were calling for the FIA to put Tecpro barriers up to minimize the impact of a crash and keep drivers safe. Tecpro barriers are barriers that are specially made for F1 and are used to absorb the impact of crashes, taking it away from the driver and car. This part of the track will definitely need to be fixed before another Miami Grand Prix.

Esteban Ocon crashed into the same barrier as Carlos Sainz

  • Mick Schumacher finished FP3 in P6! I really feel like Schumacher could get his first points finish this weekend.

  • After finishing FP1 in P7, and now finishing FP3 in P9, Alex Albon is showing us that the Williams car could have some good pace at this track!

  • The Mercedes, shockingly, finished outside the top 10 with Hamilton at P15 and Russell P17. After the good Friday sessions, we have to wonder, what happened to the upgrades?

  • The AlphaTauris did not perform very well due to porpoising. Pierre Gasly even got on his team radio and said “The car is bouncing everywhere like a kangaroo!"


All three practice sessions gave us a lot of insight on how the race should most likely go. Teams were able to adjust their cars to fit the hot and sunny Miami weather, we learned that the Mclarens won’t be very competitive this weekend, and that the top two teams will most likely be Red Bull and Ferrari again! But let's not count Mercedes out yet; they seem to have the speed, just maybe not the race pace.


Qualifying -- 5/7/2022

Due to the extent of the damage on Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, Qualifying started on Saturday afternoon with just 19 cars. Ocon’s absence set him to start Sunday's race last on the grid.


Qualifying Results

Q1:

  • Charles Leclerc led Q1 with Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, and Sergio Perez in tow. It seems that this weekend really will be the Red Bulls and Ferraris battling each other!

  • Lewis Hamilton was quite unlucky during Q1. He had to abandon his first flying lap of the session and then, his next lap time was deleted because he violated track limits. This meant that Hamilton was in the elimination zone without a lap time set. Luckily, he was finally able to go for one last flying lap at the very end of the session and managed to go from P18 to P5 and made it to Q2. 

  • Eliminated: Kevin Magnussen (P16), Zhou Guanyu (P17), Alex Albon (P18), Nicholas Latifi (P19)

    • Kevin Magnussen missed out on Q2 by just one tenth of a second! He was so close!

    • Alex Albon’s good practice performance did not show during qualifying because he struggled with warming up his tires. If the tires aren’t warm enough, you lose grip when driving at such high speeds and the car becomes harder to control.


Q2:

  • Charles Leclerc (P1), once again, led Max Verstappen (P2), Sergio Perez (P4), and Carlos Sainz (P5) in Q2. However, with a late flying lap, Lando Norris was able to put his Mclaren up into P3, splitting the Red Bulls. Very exciting news for me! Hopefully Mclaren was able to find a little more pace during FP3 and showed it off during Qualifying!

  • Sainz was a little farther off of Leclerc’s pace than he normally is. This could have been a result of the Ferraris using used soft tires while the Red Bulls used new soft tires. The Red Bulls might have found it a bit easier to find the speed in their cars with new tires on.

  • Eliminated: Alonso (P11), Russell (P12), Vettel (P13), Ricciardo (P14), Schumacher (P15)

    • George Russll has the car to make it to Q3, but due to heavy porpoising, he had to back out of two flying laps. Just like Gasly, he was probably calling his car a kangaroo!

    • Lando Norris was able to put his Mclaren into P3, but his teammate Daniel Ricciardo was eliminated from qualifying at P14. This was because of gear shift issues that Ricciardo experienced during qualifying. 


Q3:

  • The final session of qualifying had SEVEN different teams! This really shows how similar the cars are this year and how close the battles are going to be.

  • Max Verstappen was at the top of the time charts for a while, and he would have gotten pole if it weren’t for a mistake in his final lap that cost him too much time and made him abandon the lap. Verstappen’s mistake allowed Charles Leclerc to beat his time at the last second and get Pole Position with a 1:29:796s lap time. Carlos Sainz also managed to beat Verstappen and put his Ferrari in P2, making Sunday’s starting grid a Ferrari front row lockout! The Red Bull of Sergio Perez came P4, behind Verstappen in P3.

  • Valtteri Bottas finished Qualifying in P5! After his crash on Friday, he was given a new power unit, and it seems to be delivering!

  • The AlphaTauris BOTH made it to Q3, and Pierre Gasly managed a P6 finish. This is his best Qualifying result of the year! Hopefully, he’ll be back to consistently qualifying in the top 6 or 7 soon! Yuki Tsunoda also had a pretty good result, finishing in P9.

  • Lance Stroll was able to make it to Q3 for the first time in the 2022 F1 season and he qualified P10!


From left to right: Carlos Sainz (P2), Charles Leclerc (P1), and Max Verstappen (P3)

Race -- 5/8/2022

  • Aston Martin struggled with getting their fuel to the FIA regulated temperature, and decided to start both of their cars from the pit lane to warm up the fuel. 

  • As Crofty screamed, “It’s lights out and away we go!”, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen were launching their cars off the starting line. Leclerc pulled ahead while Verstappen overtook Sainz into Turn 1.

  • A water leak early in the race forced Zhou Guanyu to retire his car on Lap 7 of 57, making him the first DNF of the race. 

  • Leclerc lost the lead to Verstappen on the straight at the start of Lap 9. Trying to close the gap to Verstappen, Leclerc pitted from medium compound tires to hard compound tires on Lap 24. Verstappen, however, had built up enough of a lead to pit two laps later and still stay ahead of Leclerc. 

  • On Lap 40, Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso made contact at Turn 1. This caused damage to the AlphaTauri and on the subsequent lap, Gasly went wide at Turn 7. In post-race interviews, Gasly said that he went wide to let people pass and then he was going to retire the car because it was too damaged to race anymore. His wide turn let the two Haas drivers overtake him and Lando Norris’ Mclaren was going to go past too. Unfortunately, as he passed, Norris made contact with Gasly’s front-left tire and his right-rear tire was ripped off the car as he went spinning across the track. This crash ended Norris’ race and brought out a safety car, something Mercedes was counting on.

  • Mercedes’ race strategy for George Russell was to pit him as late as possible. They hoped that a safety car would allow them to pit late and maintain their position at the same time. They got lucky and this gamble seemed to work for this race! Russell started P11, but by staying out on the track while everyone else pitted, Russell was able to get ahead of the rest of the midfield; and when he pitted during the safety car, he maintained his position of P7. Valtteri Bottas and his Alfa Romeo looked like they would finish in P5 after staying in that position the entire race. However, a mistake into Turn 17 on Lap 49 made him go wide and allowed both Mercedes to pass him. This made Lewis Hamilton P5 and Russell P6. Then, on Lap 54, Russell was able to overtake Hamilton on his newer set of tires, and George Russell continued his streak of finishing in the top five during every race of the season! 

  • When the safety car ended on Lap 47, Verstappen was still leading but he struggled to pull away from Leclerc. Leclerc, who had closed the gap between the two during the safety car, was now less than half a second behind Verstappen and chasing him to retake the lead. At the same time, Sergio Perez was chasing Carlos Sainz for P3. It was a Ferrari challenging a Red Bull and a Red Bull challenging a Ferrari. Both Leclerc and Perez, made some good moves trying to overtake their opponent but neither of them were able to make the pass and Verstappen ended up winning with both Ferraris in tow. 

Charles Leclerc gaining on Max Verstappen during the Miami Grand Prix

  • The Alpines finished the race with Esteban Ocon in 8th and Fernando Alonso in 9th. However, Alonso was given TWO 5-second time penalties: one due to his contact with Pierre Gasly, and another due to leaving the track and gaining an advantage on Lap 56. This bumped Alonso down to P11, allowing Alex Albon to finish P9 and Lance Stroll to finish P10. Albon’s P9 finish meant that he scored 2 points! He seems to really know how to drive that Williams!

  • Kevin Magnussen retired from the race after he sustained damage from contact with Lance Stroll. Mick Schumacher looked like he was going to have his first ever points finish, but unfortunately he had a collision with Sebastian Vettel and finished P15. The damage to Vettel’s car was too severe to continue the race and he ended up retiring from the race. 


Mick Schumacher hit Sebastian Vettel and ended Vettel's race

  • It was a bad day for Mclaren, with the team having one DNF and one finish outside the points. Daniel Ricciardo wasn’t able to find the pace in his car and was given a 5-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. This penalty put him in P12 at the end of the race.

  • Nicholas Latifi did not score points. Instead he finished P14. I guess the F1 gods didn’t hear me this time.


Honorable Mentions:

  • Starting at the Australian Grand Prix, the FIA has been regulating what underwear drivers wear when they are in the cars. Yes, that is correct. They have a rule where drivers have to wear FIA approved, fireproof underwear under their race suits. It makes sense because it is for the drivers’ safety, but still, it is a fun rule to make fun of. Now, in Miami, the FIA decided it was going to get stricter about this rule. So what does our FAVORITE activist (that was not sarcastic, he is actually so cool), Sebastian Vettel do? He wears boxers OVER his race suit to make fun of the rule! As someone on Twitter said, “You’ve just gotta love ‘Seb Vettel the Rebel’”!


    "SEB VETTEL THE REBEL"

  • I understand that F1 was going for a Super Bowl level event with the Miami Grand Prix, but they didn’t need to give the drivers actual football helmets! Especially because they were exhausted and hot after the race. Along with the normal hats that the podium sitters get after a race, F1 gave Verstappen, Leclerc, and Sainz football helmets that were decorated in the same way! Verstappen was even making fun of them when he walked into the cooldown room.


Max Verstappen wearing the Pirelli Helment

  • Martin Brundle deserves some recognition for putting up with the celebrities who loitered on the grid before the race but didn’t know a thing about F1. He does a grid walk before most races where he walks around the grid and interviews drivers and team principals. This time, however, it was impossible to FIND drivers because the celebrities were in the way! And when he tried to interview them instead, they didn’t have anything F1 related to say! Martin Brundle was a trooper for tolerating that!

  • During the Drivers Parade, the cars that took the drivers around the track had their names on them and Latifi was spelled wrong! Come on, it's not even that hard to spell!


Latifi spelled with two "f"s, instead of one

That’s all folks! The 2022 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix was… interesting, to say the least. While I didn’t LOVE the track, we got some pretty cool battles between Leclerc, Verstappen, Perez, and Sainz! And I’m not THRILLED that Leclerc or Sainz didn’t win, but I’m still ok with the outcome of this race. Overall, it was a decent result for most teams (except Mclaren, but we don’t need to discuss the heartbreak us Mclaren fans endured). I know the whole Miami thing will probably have to happen again. So if it does, let’s just hope it isn’t as extravagant as this one was. It felt more like a party than a race! 


Anyways, I’ll be back in two weeks to tell you guys all about the Spanish Grand Prix!


~ Divya


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