The data confirms McLaren missed a golden opportunity to snatch sprint pole from Max Verstappen's “terrible” lap with their “2.0” car.
Mercedes, on the other hand, fell behind Alpine due to poor upgrades.
Sprint qualifying analysis
Lando Norris took pole position in sprint qualifying. The British driver could have used his time in SQ2 to beat Verstappen for the first time in a qualifying session this season, even in a sprint format.
The “new” McLaren really works and the data backs it up. Just as it was confirmed that Mercedes, despite their updates, has fallen further down the rankings.
The harsh reality for the Silver Arrows is that they are closer to Alpine and Haas than Aston Martin, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell losing out in SQ2 in a car with high aerodynamic drag due to the chosen rear wing configuration.
Ideal lap time SQ Miami
Meanwhile, the driver's last and only attempt to qualify for SQ3 was particularly difficult, as he was unable to even beat the time recorded on the medium compound in SQ2.
This was mainly due to the waiting time of over 10 minutes between the end of SQ2 and the moment the teams decided to put their drivers on track in SQ3, which meant that no one benefited from the improvements made later on the track. I can no longer receive it.
This caused major problems for the drivers in sector 1 of the final run of the session.
Norris missed pole with a terrible first partial that involved repeated corrections while surfing corners 1 to 7, losing +0.694 seconds on his best lap first sector and +0.770 seconds on Verstappen's pole sector one time.
Only Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Daniel Ricciardo were able to improve their lap times on the mandatory set of soft tires for the final SQ run.
Here you can see what the final result would be if you estimated each driver's ideal lap time during the sprint qualifying session.
Leclerc's second place after just two laps in his only practice session was notable, as was Ricciardo's impressive fourth place after benefiting from the mistakes of other drivers in his SQ3 challenge. Still, the Australian looks increasingly comfortable with the new VCARB01 chassis after a shaky start to the season.
If we talked earlier about Mercedes' high aerodynamic drag, we should point out that McLaren seems to have corrected its lack of top speed on the straights with improved aerodynamics.
The Woking-based team have risen from the bottom of this graph to the same figures as their direct rivals. All this while maintaining excellent cornering performance.
As we saw in our telemetry comparison of Norris and Verstappen's fastest laps, the “new” MCL38 is able to reach higher top speeds than before while maintaining good traction on corner exits after hard braking.
Now comes the big question for Saturday's sprint: can the new McLaren catch up with the dominant Red Bull in race pace?
Long run analysis from FP1
The data from FP1, the only free practice session of the Miami Grand Prix weekend, gives an indication not only of the sprint but also of the drivers' pace for Sunday's Grand Prix.
Leclerc's red flag after just two laps in FP1 put the weekend in jeopardy from the start, with drivers looking to push their cars to the limit to find the perfect set-up for both sprint qualifying and the race. did. sprint race.
It's important to mention that this data should be taken with a grain of salt, as we don't know fuel loads, engine maps chosen by each team, and other variables.
On the hard Pirellis, McLaren and Ferrari had almost equal pace over the long run. There is a possibility that these two teams will fight for a podium spot in Sunday's race.
In the midfield it was even more even, with Lance Stroll's Aston Martin outperforming Alpine and RB in this case.
As for mediums, Mercedes outperformed Red Bull on long runs. This statistic is completely unrealistic and shows that the Milton Keynes-based team are not living up to their potential. It will likely be run with a more conservative engine map or higher fuel load to more thoroughly evaluate Sunday's performance.
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