Peter Lyon
May 5, 2025
With a strong victory at the Miami Grand Prix yesterday, Australia’s Oscar Piastri made it a hat-trick of wins as McLaren brought home a 1-2 finish to continue their commanding Formula 1 season.
Having missed out winning the sprint race on Saturday on the last lap thanks to a rival team’s crash, giving the victory to teammate Lando Norris, Piastri finished just 4.6 seconds ahead of Norris with Mercedes’ George Russell in third place.
The result was the third consecutive win for Piastri after back-to-back triumphs in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and his fourth win this year giving the Aussie 131 points, 16 points ahead of Norris.
Pole-sitter and defending world champion Max Verstappen, finished fourth with Alex Albon of Williams in fifth and 18-year-old Italian Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes, who became the youngest driver to capture pole in the sprint race, finishing in sixth.
Piastri’s win in Miami shows what can happen when you start cleanly with a fast car, drive cleverly and get a bit of luck at the start. “I was aware enough to avoid Max in turn one, and from then I knew I had a good pace advantage. The car was great today,” Piastri commented.
“In Miami, two years ago, we were the slowest team. I pretty sure we got lapped twice. Today, we just won the race by 35 seconds,” he added.
Starting in P4, Piastri, snatched the lead on lap 14 when Verstappen held the inside line but braked late and slid wide.
As he relinquished the race lead, Max blurted about the state of his brakes on the team’s radio, ”Brakes man, honestly, useless.”
As Norris and Verstappen battled for second on lap 17, exchanging positions three times, Piastri managed to open up a decisive nine-second lead. “Oscar drove well, and Max put up a strong fight as always. I paid the price for not doing a good enough job today, but still happy to be second,” he said.
Starting from P6, Russell was on the grid behind team-mate Antonelli in qualifying but managed to drive consistently and stay out of trouble, finishing on the podium.
“Happy to come away with P3 as I struggled this weekend. Well done to McLaren,” he said.
While Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton snagged a podium finish in Saturday’s sprint race, the British seven-time world champion and teammate Charles Leclerc could not find enough pace and finished with the Monaco-born driver seventh and Hamilton one place behind.
CARLIST THOUGHTS
In a way, it’s great to see the top teams like McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, taking turns winning races and championships over the past decade or so—with Mercedes taking several titles, then Red Bull dominating as Max captured 4 straight titles before McLaren took over last year. But it would be great for the championship and especially fans if the racing was a lot closer. Piastri’s dominance in yesterday’s race was spectacular but it would be far more entertaining to see two or three drivers knocking tyres into corners as they fight for the win.
