Max Verstappen was all smiles as Lando Norris won the Miami GP
Max Verstappen isn’t willing to debate whether or not the Safety Car gave Lando Norris the win in Miami, after all, “it’s always if, if, if”.
Norris became only the second non-Red Bull driver to have won a Grand Prix since 2022 when he held off Verstappen after a Safety Car restart to win in Miami.
Max Verstappen: ‘I mean, it’s always if, if, if, right?’
It was an outcome that has pundits debating whether Norris would have won were it not for the Safety Car. That question has been answered by our resident data cruncher Pablo Hidalgo.
As his rivals’ pit stops cycled through (Carlos Sainz the last of the contenders in) Norris was leading the race and gained a free stop when Kevin Magnussen punted Logan Sargeant into retirement.
In from P1, and out he came still in P1.
Taking the restart ahead of Verstappen, the World Champion tried to attack into Turn 1 but that move failed and from there Norris scampered off into the distance to win by seven seconds.
Asked if the free pit stop helped Norris to the win, Verstappen replied: “I mean, it’s always if, if, if, right? If my mum had balls, she would be my dad.
“So, yeah. I mean, it’s how it goes to racing. Sometimes it works out for you, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Max Verstappen reveals ‘diffuser scratch’ after Perez incident
Verstappen’s attempt to overtake at Turn 1 on the restart wasn’t the Red Bull driver’s only Turn 1 moment as he also clashed with Sergio Perez at that same corner at the start of the race.
Lining up on pole position with his team-mate P4, Perez came flying up behind and narrowly avoided wiping out his team-mate in the braking zone.
Verstappen says they were “lucky” he only had a mark on his diffuser as it could’ve ended in disaster.
“I was very aware. I mean, I turned in and I saw him lock up,” he said of his team-mate’s presence at the start.
“I looked after the race, there was like a scratch on my diffuser. So something must have hit. But yeah, it was very close. Could have ended in a disaster, of course, for the team as well. So yeah, lucky.”
Luck continued to shine on the 26-year-old as he later had an incident of his own, taking out a bollard at Turn 15.
“I didn’t like it, so I decided to take it out and test the durability of the front wing as well,” he joked. “So that’s a crash test done.
“Yeah, there was no damage. The cone was out of the way for everyone, so it was basically a free-for-all after that.”
Verstappen finished the race in second to extend his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 33 points over Perez with Charles Leclerc a further five off the pace.
