6 storylines to follow as F1 returns to the United States for the Miami Grand Prix

John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

From the track itself to the chase of the Bulls, here’s what to watch in the Miami Grand Prix

A quiet April in Formula One, with just two races on the schedule, has given way to what will be a busy May. Fresh off last week’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix the grid is back in action this week, heading to South Beach for the Miami Grand Prix. This is the start of a rather hectic month for the circuit, as Miami represents the first of three races on the calendar, with Imola and Monaco coming later in the month.

What are the big storylines heading into this weekend? Let’s dive in.

Is the field catching up to Red Bull?

The three-week break between the Australian Grand Prix and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix gave teams even more time than they expected to bring some upgrades to the streets of Baku. Ahead of Azerbaijan Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff talked about the steps the team had made back at the factory.

“We’ve had a few weeks off from racing but both factories have been hard at work,” Mercedes team principal Wolff said during the break. “We’ve tried to maximise this period, bringing planned development to the car and extracting as much as possible from our learnings so far. Australia showed that we are making progress, although we need to be cautious about reading too much into a single result. But the signs in Melbourne were still encouraging and that has been a good motivator for the whole team heading into this gap in the calendar.”

Mercedes leaves Baku behind with both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell having finished in the points, and Russell having secured the fastest lap of the day, when he pitted late to change to the soft compound.

McLaren was another team eying the break, and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as an opportunity to bring some upgrades to the MCL60. Back during preseason testing, Team Principal Andrea Stella pointed to Baku as the first time the team would have major upgrades to bring to the track. When I spoke with Lando Norris last week, he previewed some of what the team was bringing to Azerbaijan.

“We’ve got a couple new bits on the car which is good, the team’s done a very good job to get them for now. But I think these are the things I think we said we should have started the season with. But we’ve got them now, which I think is the main thing,” Norris explained to me last week. “They should definitely move the car forward. It’s not maybe the best track to show that, and to prove that exactly. It’s a bit more biased, and the places it’ll help improve the car maybe aren’t shown that much on this track, maybe a little bit more in Miami. It’s definitely going to be a step forward, definitely going to be some things to help the car give me some more confidence and Oscar too. That’s a good thing, that’s what we want.”

Norris also told me that points was the goal in Baku, and that’s exactly what he accomplished. Further, the MCL60 seemed to have a bit more pace than in previous weeks, and if Norris is looking ahead to Miami, then maybe this weekend will showcase an even better version of the MCL60.

Then there is Ferrari. Charles Leclerc notched a double pole this past weekend, qualifying in P1 for both Saturday’s Sprint race and the Grand Prix on Sunday. That highlighted that over the course of one lap, the SF-23 was a notch ahead of Red Bull’s RB19. Following Sunday’s Grand Prix, where Leclerc scored the first podium of the season for the Scuderia, Leclerc was asked trackside if the team was indeed closing the gap to the Bulls, and he admitted that the “feeling is a little bit better.”

Or is Red Bull going to run away with the whole thing?

Photo by Michael Potts/BSR Agency/Getty Images

However, while all of the above may be true, there is also this.

Sergio Pérez won both the Sprint race and Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen finished in P3 on Saturday, and in P2 on Sunday, giving the Bulls their second front-row lockout of the season.

And the duo pulled away from the field on Sunday, with Leclerc finishing more than 20 seconds behind in P3.

So while the other teams might be chipping away at Red Bull, the chips are still rather small, and the Bulls remain the class of the field. Even as Leclerc admitted that the feeling was better this past weekend, he still had this to say about Red Bull’s race pace:

“Yeah, I mean, they are in another league once it comes to the race. So, the really good lap managed to put us in front, but then over 51 laps it was just not possible. They have so much more pace than we do in race pace. So yeah, as I said yesterday, I think they found something that we didn’t yet. And that’s where our focus is at the moment. Everybody’s working flat out to try and understand what we can do in the races, especially to just get more performance.”

The other teams are working hard, and there have been improvements. But Red Bull remains the team to beat, and they look to have a considerable advantage on the field right now. Teams like Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, and Aston Martin might be closing the gap, but it could all be a case of too little, too late.

A bumpy inaugural Miami Grand Prix

This is the second-ever Miami Grand Prix, fresh off its debut a season ago.

And it was a bumpy one at that. Literally.

As the teams got their first taste of the Miami International Autodrome in free practice sessions, the reviews of the track were mixed. Drivers and teams loved the layout, given the mix of long straights, technical elements, and elevation changes. But the surface posed some problems, from a lack of grip to some bumps along the circuit.

Norris and Pérez in particularly noted the bumpy nature of the track.

“It is extremely tricky. It is very bumpy in some areas which is not quite what we were expecting,” Norris said after the first two practice sessions. “I think everyone was expecting it to be very smooth and beautiful but it’s not. The surface is very tricky as well because you go off-line anywhere and it is pretty much game over and you end up in the wall, so it punishing let’s say.”

“I am really disappointed there is no grip off-line. It’s a shame because I think the racing will be bad due to that. As soon as you try to go off-line, there is no grip,” said the Red Bull driver. “It’s wet on that side. It feels very gravelly. Racing will be hard. I think it’s going to be an interesting race. We are all in the same boat. We don’t know exactly where we are. That is why you have seen quite a few people ending up in the barriers. I feel like it isn’t going to be great for racing now.”

Then there was the grip or lack thereof. Early in the week teams and drivers were struggling to find consistent grip around the circuit. Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner noted the challenges the lack of grip presented early in the week. “There’s only really one line. You go off-line and there’s zero grip,” said the Red Bull boss. “That’s going to make racing a little bit tricky but they are finding their way into it and finding the balance and setup compromise for the types of corner that you’ve got here. It’s quite challenging.”

There was also the issue of the surface coming off the track in spots. Pirelli, the dedicated tyre supplier of F1, noted that tyres were picking up stones early in the week. Race organizers used a southern Florida lime rock, combined with a granite mix from Georgia, to try to come up with a surface that worked well for an F1 surface in Miami.

But at the start of the week, the tyres were picking up some of those smaller stones. Pirelli’s F1 chief Mario Isola noted that “[t]he cars are taking off some small stones from the asphalt. Some stones are coming off, because we found the stones on the tyres, and these are obviously offline. And when you’re run off the line, you lose a little grip.”

However, following some resurfacing work put together in the days before the race, both drivers and teams eventually found there was more group around the track than expected. Wolff had this to say after the inaugural Miami GP: “Even the track breaking, Turn 17 for example, gave great racing,” he said. “It was very difficult to brake into Turn 17. If you lost the line then you lost a position or two, and it’s clear that the drivers will say: ‘well that’s not optimal.’ But for racing and entertainment it was great stuff. It’s exactly what it should be.”

It’s almost like a trick gravel bed that you need to put in there to make for exciting action. All in all, I would say for a first event, nine out of 10,” he added.

Race organizers, perhaps in an attempt to get to a 10 out of 10 on Wolff’s personal grading scale, did have the track resurfaced ahead of this year’s race. “There were parts of the racetrack last year where there was one line where there should have been the possibility to overtake, so we weren’t happy with that,” said race organizer Tom Garfinkel back in January. “So, we’re going to go ahead and repave it in an effort to try and get it to where the racing is better. It races well enough [already] according to the teams and drivers but we want it to be as good as it can possibly be so that’s why we did it.”

What about the second Miami Grand Prix itself?

Photo by Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images

Photo by Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images

Moving from what is happening on the track, to a big storyline off of it.

Last year’s inaugural Miami Grand Prix was a part of F1’s continued efforts to push into the United States market. This November’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix is another step in that direction.

In some ways, the Miami Grand Prix delivered. Viewers tuned in, as the Miami GP averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.58 million viewers on ABC, marking the largest live F1 audience ever on U.S. television and the second-largest F1 audience overall.

Fans turned out as well. According to race organizers, 243,000 attended the three-day event.

While these numbers were impressive, a big question is this: Will fans tune in again? Will they return to South Beach? Or was this more of a one-off curiosity? After all, F1 has tried to make inroads in the United States market before, and the history of F1 in the United States is filled with races that were on the calendar for a brief period of time, including a previous Las Vegas race known as the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix.

Elizabeth Blackstock, who does tremendous work covering the world of motorsports for Jalopnik, dove into this topic this week in a piece that is well worth your time. Blackstock spoke to three fans who attended last year’s Miami Grand Prix and found that it was unlikely that any of them would return.

As Blackstock notes, a lot of the marketing behind the race last year seemed focused on the fear of missing out, or FOMO:

You can see this at play with the Miami Grand Prix. That first year, everyone wanted to be there. It was a new race. It was exciting. It was going to be glamorous, but it also promised to be a little silly. It was the place to be if you wanted to be seen being an F1 fan in 2022.

This year, with less than a month to go until the race, the circuit is begging fans to renew their tickets.

Will fans head back to South Beach, or is the Vegas race in November the shiny new thing that people do not want to miss?

Can Alpine bounce back?

After the first two races of the 2023 season, it looked like Alpine was in the driver’s seat for the battle of the midfield. Following the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the team was sitting on eight points, in fifth place ahead of teams like McLaren, who had failed to secure a single point through two races.

Much has changed since then.

It has been a brutal two races for Alpine since then. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly crashed into each other at the end of the Australian Grand Prix, knocking them both out of the race and out of the points. Things did not improve in Baku, as Gasly endured an extremely difficult week and finished in P14. Ocon, after starting on pit lane, stayed out on the track during an early safety car to pick up position on the grid and was running in P9. But the gamble was that another safety car would give him a chance to make his mandatory tyre change, and he would steal points on the afternoon.

That reprieve never came, and he was forced to pit prior to the final lap, giving up the points position en route to a finish just behind his teammate, in P15.

Meanwhile, McLaren came away with double points in Melbourne, and with Norris finishing in P9 last week, McLaren now sits fifth in the Constructors’ Standings, ahead of Alpine.

After two tough races, can the team bounce back in South Beach?

Catching up with the rookies

Finally, through four races of the season, it is a good time to check in on the three rookies marking their first full season in F1.

For AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, and Logan Sargeant of Williams, life in F1 has seen some bumps at the start.

For de Vries, the season began with a pair of 14th-place finishes, before a pair of DNFs. His accident early in the race in Baku brought out the safety car, and reset the field. Following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he admitted the mistake was wholly on him. “The accident today was fully my mistake. It was very silly and unnecessary and that responsibility is on me. I am disappointed with myself but that’s the way it is,” said de Vries after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “There are positives to take away from this weekend and I’ll try to look at them. I am happy to be racing again next week so I forget this weekend as soon as possible.”

Piastri, whose contract saga was a massive storyline a season ago as Alpine and McLaren battled for his services, is the only one of the three to finish in the points this season. He finished in eighth down in Melbourne, helping McLaren to a double-points finish for the first time this season.

The McLaren rookie battled illness this past weekend in Azerbaijan and finished just out of the points in 11th. “It was a shame to miss out on points by one spot, but we were just lacking a bit of pace in the middle of the race, so there wasn’t really much more we could do. I’m happy I survived the weekend after being unwell and we’ve got some really good learning in the bank,” said Piastri after Azerbaijan. “I certainly learned a lot about the tyres in that race, and how to manage them better, so all of that will help us fight for points next time. Thanks to the team here and back at the factory for getting the upgrades out to us, it’s definitely helped. We go again in Miami.”

Then there is Sargeant, the first American driver on the grid since 2015. Sargeant has yet to break through with points this year, with his best finish coming in Bahrain when he came across the line 12th. Since then it has been a pair of P16s, along with a DNF in Melbourne.

However, if there is any solace for the Williams rookie it is this: Piastri’s first points of 2023 came in Melbourne, minutes away from where he grew up.

With the grid headed to Miami this weekend it is worth noting, Sargeant was born in Fort Lauderdale.

If the past is prologue, perhaps Sargeant breaks through this weekend in a homecoming of his own.