Star-studded Miami GP crowd sees latest Red Bull procession as Max Verstappen cruises from ninth on grid to win again
FORMULA ONE will need more than a new theme tune and a paddock full of A-listers to keep the Americans interested in this procession.
Max Verstappen cruised to victory as the sport served up another dud with his team-mate Sergio Perez in second.
It was all too easy for the Dutchman as the rest of the field pulled over and allowed him to make his way up from ninth on the grid to take the chequered flag.
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton was down in sixth place after recovering from a poor qualifying while his Mercedes team-mate George Russell was fourth.
A star-studded grid of A-listers were treated to a special driver introduction segment before the race, with rapper LL Cool J providing the words and producer will.i.am conducting an orchestra.
There is also a toe-curling new song from the latter with rapper Lil Wayne that is hilariously bad, as F1 tries to appeal to a new audience.
Clearly some drivers preferred the attention more than others while it sent fans into meltdown on social media as they called on F1 never to repeat the stunt.
The flashy intro saw each driver called out from behind a curtain to plumes of dry ice while they were all given top billing.
To his credit LL Cool J at least got all their names right.
Poor old F1 legend Sir Jackie Stewart was caught up in the melee of fame-hungry photo-taking influencers and manhandled by security guards as he tried to drag tennis star Roger Federer to speak with Sky’s Martin Brundle.
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Once the stage was cleared and the influencers scraped off the grid the racing finally got underway and it was Perez who got the best start to remain ahead of Fernando Alonso.
Hamilton, who was starting in 13th, was caught in traffic and made contact with Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg.
And Verstappen also made a slow start on the slower hard tyre and dropped a place to tenth.
But the Dutchman’s pain was short-lived as he started scything his way through the field.
By the fourth lap, he was up to sixth place with a beautiful double overtake of Charles Leclerc and Kevin Magnussen.
He then pulled off a stunning move with the help of the DRS to pass George Russell to move up a place before hunting down Carlos Sainz, who was in third place.
Much further back and trundling around in 13th Hamilton was not happy as he complained over his team’s radio that he did not think he’d make it to the end of the race.
He was reassured by his race engineer but struggled to get past Alex Albon’s Williams in ninth place.
But Verstappen was having no such problems. He swooped past Sainz unchallenged on lap 14 to go into third.
A lap later he overtook Alonso to go into second place and started cutting into Perez’s lead.
The Mexican was called in for fresh tyres on lap 21 and had a quick 2.2-second pit stop, but the tyre change promoted Verstappen into the lead.
The world champion set about pumping in quick laps as he tried to open up enough advantage over his team-mate to make his necessary pit-stop.
But he was not entirely comfortable as he asked his race engineer about the settings of his front wing.
But he was given a ticking off and told to stick to driving. His engineer replied: “Max, I’m looking at that on the pit wall, you focus on driving please.”
Verstappen finally pitted from the lead at the end of lap 45 promoting Perez back into the lead.
RED BULL BLITZ
But the Mexican’s advantage lasted just a few laps as Verstappen made up the 1.6-second deficit and passed him with ease on lap 48.
Verstappen said: “It was a good race. I stayed out of trouble at the beginning and picked off the cars one by one.
“I had a little battle with Checo at the end but we kept it clean and that is the main thing.
“The qualifying was a bit of a setback but winning a race from P9 is always nice.”
Perez added: “I tried and gave it my all. The first stint was poor with graining and it compromised my race. Max deserved to win.”
It means Verstappen has a 14-point lead in the championship after winning three of the first five races this season.
If the 90,766 capacity crowd – plus the bumper TV audience – expected the drama and excitement depicted in Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’, they didn’t get it.
And that leaves F1 with a bit of a problem, because this was certainly not the advert they needed to show off their sport to the United States.
