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Lando Norris won the Miami Grand Prix sprint race after a timely safety car
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The Brit overtook his team-mate Oscar Piastri in the pits with racing suspended
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Max Verstappen was handed a 10-second penalty and fell out of the points
Lando Norris
benefited from a timely safety car to take victory in the rain-splattered sprint race in Miami.
The British driver was in the pits for new tyres when
Fernando Alonso
pranged his Aston Martin. With racing suspended, he emerged with an impregnable lead across the closing four laps – all disappointingly served behind the safety car.
Norris’s McLaren team-mate
Oscar Piastri
was thus denied the win that had looked likely to be his when he took the first corner ahead of Mercedes’ surprise pole-sitter, 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli.
Ahead of Sunday’s grand prix proper, Piastri, who finished second, still leads Norris in the standings by nine points.
Lewis Hamilton
finished third for Ferrari after shrewdly pitting early to move from intermediate tyres to dries. ‘I am so happy,’ he said. ‘It’s been a tough year.’
Max Verstappen
was handed a 10-second penalty for an unsafe release that caused him to clip Antonelli in the pits. This plunged the world champion to 17th place. Antonelli was condemned to finish 10th.
Despite soaring temperatures over the week, rain fell hard to delay proceedings by half-an-hour.
By then, Charles Leclerc had smashed his Ferrari into the wall on the formation lap, his afternoon over.
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