VERSTAPPEN MASTERED MIAMI, 1-2 FOR RED BULL RACING

Max Verstappen won the Miami Grand Prix with his third victory of the season, his 38th of F1 career, equaling with Sebastian Vettel for the most wins for Red Bull.

His teammate, Sergio Perez, finished second, securing the team's 26th double win in history. Fernando Alonso climbed to the third step of the podium.

After two weeks, the fight will continue in Imola, where a series of three races in a row begins.

Over the weekend, the Miami circuit showed a tricky character. The organizers laid new asphalt, which turned out to be smooth and slippery. Some teams managed this situation, others fell back in the standings.

Specifically, both McLaren drivers dropped out of the fight already in the first segment of qualifying, and Lewis Hamilton ended the fight in the second. At the same time, last year's main problem remained, the grip was only on the racing line.

Charles Leclerc ended up in the barriers twice, once in the practice session, the second time in qualifying, leading to an early end to the Q3 under red flags. The results were unexpected, and did not reflect the current form of the drivers and their cars.

Sergio Perez started from pole, and his teammate Max Verstappen, who was by far the fastest, from ninth position.

Perez and Alonso started the race from the front row, Sainz Jr. and Magnussen from second, Gasly and Russell from third.

Before the start, a stage was set up on the main course, a full orchestra was brought in, and rapper LL Cool J was tasked with introducing the drivers to the crowd. Commercialization the American Shund way.

In the race, Ocon, Verstappen, Hulkenberg, Hamilton, Guanyu, Tsunoda and Stroll started on white, Norris and Piastri on red, the rest on yellow tires.

At the start, Sergio Perez held the lead after the first corner, while Kevin Magnussen lost three positions, Bottas came out ahead of Ocon and Verstappen.

Further down the order, Oscar Piastri moved up five places on red tires and Norris lost three after contact with de Vries.

The top ten finish in Round 2 was: Perez, Alonso, Sainz Jr., Gasly, Russell, Leclerc, Magnussen, Bottas, Verstappen, Ocon.

To everyone's surprise, Kevin Magnussen was putting up decent fight with the Ferrari car, so Leclerc had a hard time overtaking Dane. At one point, the flying Dutchman took advantage, overtaking the two for 6th place.

The gamble of the McLaren drivers with the red tires did not pay off, the race had a clean start without incidents and without the safety car coming out, so already in the 6th lap they had to the pits for new tires.

In the 9th lap, Verstappen overtook Russell, and in the 10th, Pierre Gasly for the fourth place. This was taken advantage of by George Russell who managed to get ahead of the Frenchman in the number 10 of Alpine F1 team.

Already on the 14th lap, Max was ahead of Sainz Jr. in third place, and a few moments later he overtook Fernando Alonso for second place. It was still to be seen if Perez on yellow, or Verstappen on white, was on a winning strategy.

As the race progressed, white tires were the better race tire for Miami, while the yellows saw increased graining, which meant the Mexican lost first place. Verstappen was therefore the last driver left on track with the initial set of white tyres, which he came in to swap for yellows only on lap 46, rejoining the track a second and a half behind Perez.

By lap 48, the Dutchman was ahead of Perez to regain the race lead. In the end, Max took his third win of the season, setting the fastest lap in the race and now has a 14-point lead over Perez in the overall driver standings.

One step behind, Fernando Alonso also had a great race. The gap between the Red Bull cars and the rest was obvious, but the Spaniard managed to finish less than 21 seconds behind them in a race without the safety car coming out, and also held off George Russell and Carlos Sainz Jr, who earned a 5 second penalty due to speeding in the pit lane.

Lewis Hamilton, after starting from 13th position, with the good choice of white tires for the initial stint, managed to finish sixth, ahead of Charles Leclerc who spent more than half of the race fighting against Kevin Magnussen who ended up tenth behind the two Alpine drivers.