How Antonelli and Mercedes defeated Norris and McLaren in Miami's F1 thriller

For Formula 1 fans of a certain vintage, the combination of German and Italian national anthems was so ubiquitous that they, for all intents and purposes, served as the ending credits music amid the years of Michael Schumacher's dominance with Ferrari. Never before had they been played the other way around on the podium until this season, but the remixed version of the 'ending credits' has since blared out of F1's PA system three times consecutively.

And there's a very simple reason for that: Kimi Antonelli is in the form of his life.

The Miami Grand Prix thrives on its reputation as an ostentatious experience, diving headfirst into the Miami Vice aesthetic and opulent fake-marina 'grandstands' - even surpassing itself by building a giant mock cruise ship to appeal to the beige-shirted, beige-trousered brigade. But it's never had a race that could match the bombast until now, as Antonelli and Lando Norris - left sporting the bravest of faces post-race - served up a battle for the lead that kept everyone watching on tenterhooks.

Rain had been a significant threat to proceedings. Forecasts of thunderstorms in the latter part of the afternoon prompted the FIA to move the start of the race to three hours sooner than the scheduled 4pm kick-off had been the solution, yet the weather radars still predicted a downpour. This was something for the teams to account for, although Chekhov's gun remained conspicuously inert as the race continued to progress.

In short, the defining factor was this: Antonelli and Mercedes had outfoxed the Norris-McLaren combination through its undercut stop. The Italian teen had made his switch to the hard tyre at the end of the 26th lap, enough time to emerge between the early-stopping Max Verstappen and the yet-to-pit Franco Colapinto, and threw together a rapid out-lap to close some of the door. Norris, meanwhile, endured a stop that was 0.6s slower than Mercedes' effort - his 2.8s stop paling in comparison to Antonelli's 2.2s stop.

The gap before the stops had been over two seconds; Norris and Antonelli were side-by-side on the pit exit. With warmer tyres, Antonelli had a clear advantage in that scenario. Norris hadn't seen the Italian on his left as he vacated the pitlane, but the attempt to pull ahead regardless was futile; on taking the outside line through Turn 3, Antonelli switched to the right-hand side and soaked up the overspeed to chop across at Turn 5 to take the lead. 

Norris attempted to fight back, but the two needed to dispatch the out-of-sequence Verstappen. The Red Bull driver had both revelled in and endured a manic opening flurry of laps: having started second alongside Antonelli, he opened with a 360-degree spin at Turn 2 while attempting to hold off a fast-starting Charles Leclerc, and the subsequent loss of positions got the Dutchman's dander up. His return to the top six came courtesy of his trademark aggression in dispatching the upper midfield runners, and was utterly uncompromising in working through the 'traffic'. 

Antonelli lost the lead from pole, but Mercedes took the whip hand with strategy

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When the safety car had emerged to deal with two separate incidents - Isack Hadjar's clout with the barrier at Turn 14, and Pierre Gasly's flip after being dumped into the wall by Liam Lawson - Verstappen chose to pit for the hards. At his rate of knots, this was going to give him track position once he'd worked his way past the midfield pack, but his 20-lap-old tyres were a millstone around his neck when Antonelli and Norris came to play.

Once the two had broken through Verstappen, whose defence might have actually set him back a touch with tyre life, it spawned a tete-a-tete battle between the reigning champion and the current championship leader. Despite Norris' best efforts to stay in touch, however, he was unable to snowball this into any kind of concerted charge for the lead.

Although the rain had never emerged beyond a few cursory sprinkles, McLaren had been planning to run Norris long and then make the switch if the downpour had arrived. When it became apparent that the rain was not going to be forthcoming, and that the rest of the field were making 'normal conditions' pitstops, Mercedes simply blinked quicker than McLaren, resulting in the switch in positions.

"It was not easy; Lando was quick and he was applying a lot of pressure and just I knew I couldn't make any mistakes" Kimi Antonelli

But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella also noted the legacy of the slower stop; had McLaren matched Mercedes on a 2.2-second service, Norris might have had a fighting chance to stay ahead. Antonelli would still have retained a pace advantage along the back straight and the run into Turn 12 through his warmer tyres, but Norris might have overcome that with half-a-lap's worth of heat in the Pirelli C3s. That said, Stella had also suggested that Norris' in-lap hadn't been the cleanest either, exacerbating the problem.

"I think we will review how much of the time lost in pit lane has to do with what we call the stationary part, which is the pitstop itself," Stella explained. "Certainly our pitstops today were not absolutely perfect, so we will have to see, but I think compared to an ideal pitstop, we lose a few tenths of a second in the stationary execution itself."

"I think once we saw that the pitstop wasn't perfect, we lost time in pitlane, like I said before, we saw in the in-lap Lando had a couple of moments, so we knew the in-lap wasn't going to be very good, we knew that with Antonelli coming with hot tyres it would have been very difficult, so it's a combination of factors that compound it."

Although Norris had been able to cling onto Antonelli for the next 12 laps or so, sitting within a second of the leader, there were precious few opportunities for him to make a play for the lead. This was unlike the opening phase of the race, where Antonelli did make a couple of mistakes; although his start was better compared to the sprint race, it nonetheless cost position to Leclerc. And, when Antonelli over-consumed battery energy in trying to pass Leclerc, it offered Norris the chance to leapfrog him moments before the safety car emerged.

Norris led before the stops after dispatching Antonelli and Leclerc - but McLaren was outfoxed in the pits

Photo by: Ryan Pierse / Getty Images

"Luckily, the undercut worked very well and then we found ourselves being chased," Antonelli reflected. "But it was not easy because Lando was quick and he was applying a lot of pressure and just I knew I couldn't make any mistakes.

"It was very stressful because he was also on the edge of getting so many times the overtake mode. So we know how powerful that is and just I knew I couldn't make any mistakes. And it was not easy because the conditions were tricky today with the rain that kind of cleaned a bit the rubber that was on track and just was very slippery."

Unlike the opening act of the race, Antonelli was not caught in the middle between two cars: he was leading, and thus only needed to deploy the boost button in defence. Were this his first time at the front, Antonelli might have succumbed to the pressure; with two wins under his belt already, however, the Italian must now feel like an old hand at this. Even when the stress got to him, particularly when he was juggling a downshift issue and a lack of grip in his rear tyres, Pete Bonnington's sage advice kept Antonelli on the straight and narrow.

"It didn't really affect the pace. Just in the moment, I had two or three laps where I wasn't getting some of the downshifts," he explained. "And then I had a couple of laps where it wouldn't upshift from seventh to eighth. So it was a little bit stressful, but luckily it was just the matter of those few laps and then it was fine. It was adding stress because I was being chased and I knew I couldn't make any mistakes and that wasn't helping for sure. But it lasted very shortly, so I was happy with that."

Norris had attempted to make something of Antonelli's brace of track limits offences, but Mercedes was also on the case here; Toto Wolff threatened to make his driver aware on the radio, but Bonnington ensured that it was all in hand. 

By the 41st lap, Antonelli had broken the one-second gap to Norris, which ensured that the McLaren could no longer make use of the overtake mode. It was at this point where it looked as though the Briton had been defeated as the gap rose to two seconds; although it briefly dipped under that bracket for a handful of laps, Norris didn't really have an answer. When engineer Will Joseph informed him of a rear wing issue, it was game over.

"I think what we have seen is that in the race, if anything, McLaren seemed to have retained from last year the characteristic of being consistent on the tyres, probably a little bit more than some of our competitors," Stella reviewed. "I think the main advantage of Mercedes on us is pure pace. Their car is just a couple of tenths faster than our car. 

"So this means that when things are so close, and when you have four teams in such a tight competition, execution, adaptation, and optimisation can become the decisive factor.

Once Verstappen was out of the way, it was gloves-off between the leading pair

Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images

"And while we have had a very positive weekend, I think today in the race we might have lost the possibility to win it, again for a matter of execution and optimisation of what was available. We were fighting a faster car than us, but perhaps if we had kept Lando in the lead, we could have led it to the finish."

Norris concurred: "I feel like I've done a very good job the whole weekend too. So there's a lot of positives. We've improved such a big amount.

"And the fact we're just fighting for a win, when if you look at our pace in the races over the last couple, the pace and the speed we had [last year] was certainly not there. So the fact we made such a big step this weekend is great to see. And I'm very proud of the team and all the work that's been put in has paid off immediately.

"But you always have to look at and ask yourself the question, do you feel like you maximised everything today? And I'm unsure about that. 

"When you have four teams in such a tight competition, execution, adaptation, and optimisation can become the decisive factor" Andrea Stella

"I'm not saying we would have won the race because I think Kimi drove an excellent race and his pace was very strong. His pace, especially end of stints, was incredibly strong. So he might have still passed me later on in the second stint if we boxed earlier. But at least we would have given ourselves a fighting chance. And we didn't give that to ourselves today. So I'm a little bit disappointed by that."

For now, however, it appears that Mercedes might not have it all its own way. There's still the matter of its Montreal upgrades to consider; the W17s were only given a couple of minor updates for Miami, and the progress of McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull demonstrated the performance surplus on the table. 

However, Antonelli is looking more and more like the real deal. While George Russell was of the opinion that Miami is not a circuit he meshes with at all, it was a bruising weekend for the beanpole Briton; even he had to admit that the momentum was now with his younger team-mate. Mercedes' biggest job is to manage expectations around its teenage sensation - but as long as he continues to excel, that job will start to become nigh-on impossible.

A tip of the cap from Norris, as Antonelli won out to extend his championship lead over Russell to 20 points

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