Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri's Miami GP battles with Max Verstappen reviewed by Martin Brundle

The 2025 Miami F1 Grand Prix promised much and largely delivered.

The opening stages were dramatic with great wheel-to-wheel action between pole-sitter Max Verstappen and championship leader Oscar Piastri. And also, from a recovering Lando Norris making his way once more towards the front of the race.

After 57 intense laps we witnessed the increasingly impressive Piastri take his third consecutive F1 victory, the fourth of this season, and his 32nd consecutive points-scoring weekend, in a most assured manner to increase his world championship lead.

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The much-talked-about and expected rainstorm swerved the Hard Rock Stadium venue, and three 'Virtual Safety Cars' - rather than the physical 'follow me round and join the queue' Safety Car - meant the race didn't generate the reset it needed in the second half. But there's still a significant amount to talk about.

Such is the relentless schedule of races, we're already a quarter of the way through the GP calendar, and a third of the way into the six Sprint races scheduled

18-year-old Kimi Antonelli's pole position for the Miami Sprint race, and third on the grid for the main Sunday GP, was very much a good news story. He's a breath of fresh air and a star of the future, even if he was a touch wild and loose in both races. He'll sort that out, he's clearly a fast learner.

'Piastri more effective and clinical than Norris'

Norris was assisted by a convenient Safety Car to win the Sprint race, just as he was in winning the Grand Prix last year, but having to avoid Verstappen's Red Bull sliding around in the first two corners of the main race on Sunday cost him a chance of another outright victory.

Max wasn't having a McLaren slip up the inside of turn one and claim the high ground again, as happened in Jeddah, but he arrived a bit too hot and locked up the front tyres. Lando went underneath him and hit the throttle, the road was clear ahead, and he had the pack on his tail, it was the only thing he could and should have done. But Max had another twitch in turn two and suddenly Lando, now on the outside, quickly ran out of space and was obliged to take to the runoff zone, costing him four positions.

Once Piastri had dispatched Antonelli for second place, he set about hunting down the leader Verstappen with some gusto. Piastri has great race craft and it's fractionally more effective and clinical than Norris, and Verstappen knows that too.

On lap 14 Piastri would eventually coerce Verstappen onto the defensive into turn one, both in terms of forcing him offline and tight to the inside and having to brake too late. Piastri instinctively saw the Red Bull slide developing and adjusted his position perfectly before ducking underneath and seizing a lead he would never relinquish.

Meanwhile Norris made his way past the Williams of Alex Albon and both Mercedes of Antonelli and George Russell, in some style it must be said. But Norris couldn't quite put Verstappen under the same tactical pressure as Piastri did, and by the time he finally slipped by for good on lap 18, having had to yield back the position to Verstappen on the previous lap for overtaking off track, his team-mate Piastri was nine seconds up the road.

In a weekend when McLaren would secure a double one-two in the two races, a Virtual Safety Car (VSC) deployed when Ollie Bearman's Haas expired on the side of the track played perfectly for the team, with a nicely spaced double stacked pit stop just before the VSC was lifted and everyone was up to racing speed again.

From there on, the two McLaren bandits were a second per-lap faster than the rest of the field, as Norris did his best to catch Piastri and we saw the true and unfiltered pace of the car on a long run and dry track.

Russell had been struggling through the event, seemingly missing a couple of tenths of pace, but he kept his head, car, and tyres together with solid momentum along with a well-timed one and only pit stop to secure yet another podium. What nearly let him down was his stomach, with some painful cramping in the final 15 laps.

Russell had benefitted from also pitting on lap 29 under the VSC and moving up to third place, but Max Verstappen kept him very honest throughout the closing phases, even telling tales out of school that George hadn't lifted the throttle when passing a yellow flag.

The Red Bull team escalated this after the race with a protest, one which the Stewards denied when saying 'the protest is rejected and not founded'.

'Albon in the form of his life'

Fifth would fall to Alex Albon with another excellent and feisty race. This means that Williams were the fourth fastest team on the day and had looked much like that all weekend. But for a Safety Car technicality in the Sprint, Albon would have scored another handful of points there too, and he is in the form of his life.

Carlos Sainz in the second Williams had a few adventures and was carrying damage from first lap contact with his team-mate. VSC pit stop timing frustrations would mean that he'd end up behind the two Ferraris, indeed into the side of Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari after a rather ambitious attempt to run up the inside of the man who took his Ferrari drive on the final lap. No further action was taken on either driver for the contact, and they were deemed equally at fault for the 'avoidable contact'.

Antonelli finished sixth after getting unlucky, having pitted four laps before a VSC. He unsurprisingly has some tidying up to do with tyre management on the longer, hotter stints.

Charles Leclerc and Hamilton finished seventh and eighth after some swapping around of positions and plenty of radio transmission angst. Leclerc was 57 seconds behind the leader in a 57-lap race, and so it's easy to calculate just how far off the pace they were on a difficult weekend.

Hamilton would start on hard compound tyres and finish on mediums, and Leclerc would do the opposite. When they met in the middle, Hamilton expected the team to let him through quickly as he rapidly caught his team-mate, but they prevaricated for three laps.

It's probably unfair that some radio calls are broadcast to the world but it's very much part of the F1 show and intrigue. Lewis's 'take a tea break' and effectively 'do you want me to let the Williams past as well' comments can't be unsaid, although the team and drivers closed rank after the race to help smooth it over.

Leclerc was allowed back past Hamilton, whose medium compound tyres were now fading, but he couldn't catch Antonelli in the closing stages.

Yuki Tsunoda finished 10th for Red Bull, just keeping Isack Hadjar's RB at bay despite attracting a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane, and this meant that five teams in McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams and Ferrari shared all the points, with two cars each in the top ten.

Aston Martin were painfully the slowest cars in the race, and unless they have some magic upgrades imminent it's going to be a long and very painful year for the Silverstone-based team, and that's sad for all F1.

There's a week to catch our collective breaths, then a European triple header in Imola, Monaco, and Barcelona will be upon us.

F1's European season begins with the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on May 16-18, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime

(c) Sky Sports 2025: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri's Miami GP battles with Max Verstappen reviewed by Martin Brundle