Episode 14
Miami Grand Prix Review || F1 2023
Welcome back to The Steward's Office. I'm back after missing Baku since I was on holiday but I'm here to breakdown and give my thoughts on the second Miami Grand Prix. We definitely had an interesting starting grid thanks to quali and there were some teams that surprised me in not such a great way. So, get ready, because you've been summoned to The Steward's Office
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Music: Dirty Gertie by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Transcript
But to see
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::So I thought there was definitely a chance for them to do okay this race and just this weekend in general. But Oscar ended up in P19 and Lando in P16. To be fair, in FP3, the results weren't great for them, but I think I was just expecting a bit more from the team. I thought maybe FP3 was an anomaly when in all truth, it was actually FP2 that was the anomaly, and FP3 was actually a show of what their pace was like. But whatever upgrades they're bringing just aren't making a huge difference to, their one lap pace right now, and the McLarens are suffering in quality because of it. The biggest shock from that session for me was Lance Stroll, hands down, who ended up in P 18. It was nowhere near where
:: ::Either way, though, the pace of car just wasn't there to help him combat any of those issues, and that P13 quali meant that this was the first time Lewis had qualified out of the top six whilst in America. I can't lie though I was a little bit surprised to see an Alpha Romeo managed to make it into q3. I don't think they've managed to do that at all this season. The car just has not been great for them, but Valtteri managed to get that car out og Q2 and we ended up having seven different teams in q3, which is pretty nice to see. I can't lie. I love seeing more teams managing to get into q3, even though realistically I knew out of those seven teams there was only one team that was gonna get pole position. It's
::But he ended up having to abort that lap. Checo, on the other hand, managed to set a time on his first flying lap to get him provisional pole. And then we definitely saw some more pace out of the Aston Martin for Fernando taking P2 at the time. And those first few laps were gonna be so, so crucial to every driver in Q3 because when they all went out for their final laps of the session, Charles Leclerc ended up spinning in turn four, going into a runoff area, and the back of the car had bumped into a barrier and put an end to his session. That meant another red flag was brought out and it then
:: :: :: :: ::What was a little strange was Logan going into the pits for a new set of tires and a new front wing, three laps into the race. Now, I didn't see anything. I don't think Skye has shown us anything happening with him, so I'm not sure if maybe he scraped or knocked into a wall that had damaged maybe a front wing end plate or whether there was debris that might have damaged his car from the Nick Lando incident. But it just. Wasn't a great start to the race for him. Let's be honest here. The entire weekend was just awful for him. Logan has had much better races over the course of the season so far, and this just wasn't one of them. So it's gotta be gutting when that awful race is your home race. If there was anyone who thought it was gonna take Max Verstappen a long time to get towards the front of the pack, then I really need to ask, have they been watching F1 at
:: :: :: ::The upgrades that they're bringing don't really seem to be cutting down that time that they're losing both in quali and in race pace. And I just, I don't know guys at this point, I can't see them catapulted into the front of the grid consistently. I think it's gonna be a really up-and-down season for them.
I think there will be some races where they do well and some where they won't. Um, Miami was. Definitely a race where they did not do well with neither of the drivers managing to get into the points. Ferrari's race was just a little bit of a nightmare. I don't get why that car always seems to do well on one lap pace, but they just can't get their car to perform in a similar way during the race. Carlos seemed to be in no man's land from the start. He wasn't able to keep up with Fernando in
:: :: :: ::So the race was something that I think probably lifted the spirits of the team, but it's still not where they want to be. I mean, their race pace was pretty similar to Fernando's. But he was chilling in his own little bubble in P3, not able to keep up with the pace of the Red Bulls that were in front of him, and no real threat from behind. So it could be that he was just holding back on the pace a little bit because there wasn't really a need for him to push and wear out the engine or risk making a stupid mistake. Barring all that though, it was clear that the Merc's race piece was better than the Ferrari. But quali pace is something that they're really gonna need to work on. Otherwise, they're just making the race harder on themselves. And like we saw with Lewis, they're gonna be more susceptible to incidents if they can't qualify the cars further up the field. You are just more likely to get into an incident. Lance didn't make up the places I think everyone
:: :: :: ::But for me, I have to say my driver of the day was Lewis. In a car that was a struggle to drive this weekend to make up seven places was pretty impressive and there were some pretty clean and just, great overtakes against Val and Charles that I really loved watching. F1 are taking a week break before we head out to Imola and we should be seeing some massive updates come from a few of the teams out there, so that's gonna be an interesting one. It's a GP that I really enjoy and I can't wait to see what these huge updates are gonna include and what they could do to
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