Surprise in the first free practice session for the 2023 Miami Grand Prix: not top favorite Max Verstappen, but the two Mercedes drivers took the lead in the classification. Ultimately, George Russell was fastest with a best time of 1:30.125 minutes, 0.212 seconds ahead of his team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Meanwhile, Nico Hulkenberg crashed.
Verstappen led the field until just before the end, but Mercedes didn’t pull the soft Pirelli tires until the very end, when conditions were best, and took full advantage of this opportunity. At the end of the session, when he was already on a long run, Verstappen was undercut by Charles Leclerc (Ferrari / +0.324).
The big innovation compared to the Miami premiere last year is the completely new asphalt strip in 2023. As expected, this offered little grip at the beginning of the session. He has the feeling that he drives “like on ice if I get just an inch off the ideal line,” Verstappen complained during his first run.
This is exactly what may have been Nico Hülkenberg’s undoing. The Haas driver was sensationally in the lead after half an hour and was half a second faster than his teammate Kevin Magnussen at the time. The two were in P2 and P4 when Hülkenberg crashed into the barriers at the exit of turn 3.
The German was not even setting a personal best when his rear end slipped and spun on soft tires five laps old. “I lost it,” he immediately admitted on the pit radio. Damage to the car was minor, except for the right front suspension, which dangled loosely from the Haas chassis after the crash.
Hulkenberg ultimately finished ninth, 1.267 seconds off Russell’s best time. In front of him in positions 4 to 8 were Verstappen (+0.424), Carlos Sainz (Ferrari/+0.599), Pierre Gasly (Alpine/+0.979) and the two Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso (+1.106) and Lance Stroll (+1.212). ).
Big deficit for Pérez
The weekend had started with problems for Russell. On his very first lap, he reported vibrations in the steering column on the pit radio. “Can we change that for the second run, or better yet, right before we do laps?” he asked. The team replied: “Negative. Nothing we can do during the session.”
Russell then pitted after just two laps of installation. He called for a conversion, “even if it takes half an hour”. Because: “We can’t learn anything like that,” Russell grumbled. Then a hectic repair began on the open front end of the Mercedes. “A problem because he loses a lot of training time,” says “Sky” expert Ralf Schumacher.
During the session it turned out that, according to Mercedes information, Russell’s steering column was equipped with an experimental part “that was too heavy. So we had to convert it back to the standard specification”. For this reason, the mechanics had to change the entire steering column.
Sergio Pérez (11th/Red Bull/+1.441) may also need to be modified. His big deficit could be a result of the wrong set-up, because Pérez was seven km/h faster than Verstappen at the top speed measurement with 347.0 km/h and was the fastest in the field. But he lacked the necessary grip in the corners.