Verstappen moves up a spot in the sprint race due to Antonelli’s time penalty: ‘It’s nice that I can fight with cars in front of me again’ | Sport

After a hopeful Friday, Max Verstappen finished fifth in the sprint race in Miami. After a nice battle, the Dutchman still finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli, who finished behind the Dutchman due to a late five-second time penalty. World champion Lando Norris secured the first non-Mercedes victory of the year.

“Enormous progress,” Verstappen exulted after Friday, in which he finished half a second behind pole sitter Norris in sprint qualifying. However, after a scorching sprint race in Miami – with a track temperature of almost 50 degrees – the Dutchman has to conclude that really competing for the podium places still seems a bridge too far for now.

Starting from P5, Verstappen had a difficult start on the track next to the Hard Rock Stadium. George Russell quickly passed the Red Bull in his Mercedes, after which the Dutchman ended up in a nice battle with seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

While Verstappen was first overtaken by his former title competitor and dropped back to P7, the Dutchman did not give up. After overtaking, Verstappen was first ordered to give the place back to Hamilton (he had pushed the Brit off the track), but not much later the Red Bull driver still managed to overtake the Ferrari in a regular manner.

Ultimately, Verstappen, who complained about bouncing when braking during the race, even came very close to Russell and, looking at pure speed, this can once again be described as hopeful. Because Antonelli was penalized by track limits with a five-second penalty, Verstappen can add 4 points in the world championship with his sixth place.

Shortly afterwards, in conversation with Viaplay, Verstappen was satisfied that he could fight with Hamilton and Russell, but was also critical. “That’s nice, that you are fighting with those cars in front of you, but the start was not good again. After that I was able to catch up again, but the rear of the car just bounces too much and that costs a lot of lap time.”

At McLaren the mood is high in Miami. After Russell and Kimi Antonelli consistently shared the spoils in the first three races of the year, it is still orange at the top this weekend. Norris rode unthreatened from pole to victory and saw how teammate Oscar Piastri took second place.

This was partly due to a (again) lousy start by World Cup leader Antonelli. The young Italian has had difficulty starting more often this year and this time too he dropped from P2 to P4. Piastri and Charles Leclerc overtook the Mercedes driver and Antonelli was unable to overtake the pair.

After two victories for Russell at the Australian Grand Prix and the sprint race in China and two victories for Antonelli at the Grands Prix of China and Japan, no Mercedes has now reached the podium at the sprint race in Miami. Russell finished fourth.

This means that McLaren, driving a Mercedes engine, seems to be the big winner of the five-week spring break that the teams have had.

There were problems in the sprint race for Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) and Nico Hülkenberg (Audi). Lindblad did not leave the garage at all, while Hülkenberg had smoke coming out of his car on the way to the starting grid. As a result, the German did not start either.