Red Bull’s Max Verstappen showed the Formula 1 world who’s the daddy with a sensational pole position at the Miami Grand Prix.
The Dutch ace pipped McLaren’s Lando Norris by the slender margin of 0.065s with Sprint polesitter Andrea Kimi Antonelli taking third.
After mixed conditions made for a chaotic Sprint, the Miami International Autodrome was dry as GP qualifying commenced.
After crashes for Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso earlier on in Saturday’s running, the mechanics of each team worked hard to get their drivers ready for the qualifying action.
Russell was the last to put in an initial Q1 effort, with just over seven minutes remaining.
As the five-minute warning passed, Esteban Ocon, Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly, Lance Stroll and Oliver Bearman were the five who needed to improve and escape an early elimination.
Lewis Hamilton, fresh from third in the Sprint, was on the brink in 15th, and the pressure was on the Ferrari driver.
Both Aston Martins out in Q1
Hamilton kept himself safe, improving to eighth, but the same couldn’t be said for Alonso, Gasly, Stroll and Bearman, who rounded out the bottom four places in Q1.
They were joined by Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber as Ocon improved by a slither to safely advance to Q2 by a matter of 0.023s.
At the sharp end, Verstappen topped the initial segment of qualifying, 0.085s faster than Norris.
Gasly’s demise was Jack Doohan’s gain with the Australian out-qualifying his Alpine team-mate for the first time in 2025.
One team to watch out for heading into Q2 was Williams.
Both of the Grove-based outfit’s drivers out-qualified Ferrari in Q1, and did so again in the opening runs of Q2, provisionally going fifth and sixth.
Russell, meanwhile, was unhappy, sitting in 11th and feeling he had no grip.
Piastri wasn’t having any trouble, however, topping the field by just over two tenths from Verstappen.
That margin meant the Australian could sit in the garage as the remaining 14 cars went out with just over three minutes remaining in Q2 to try and improve.
Hamilton out in Q2
Russell, initially fearful, did enough to advance in third.
The same couldn’t be said for his former Mercedes team-mate Hamilton, with a lock-up into Turn 17 proving costly and dumping him out of Q2 in 12th.
Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar was the quickest of the dropouts in 11th, with Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto in 13th, ahead of Doohan and Hadjar’s team-mate Liam Lawson.
“What is going on with this battery?” exclaimed Lawson, as his team acknowledged a technical issue hampered his progress.
Nobody could catch Piastri in that session, and he advanced to the Q3 top-10 shootout with a healthy margin in hand.
Could anyone stop him in Q3?
The Flying Dutchman
Verstappen was determined to do so, laying down provisional pole with a 1:26.492s time, three-thousandths faster than Norris, with Piastri only third.
First had become third for the Australian, but by the smallest of margins: 0.017s.
The Flying Dutchman was finding his advantage in the fast sweeping corners of Sector 1, and holding things together just enough around the rest of the lap.
Vertsappen headed back out ahead of the two McLarens for the final runs, with the trio poised for a three-way shootout for pole.
A slip and slide into Turn 1 did little to halt Verstappen’s charge, as he set a purple opening sector en route to improving his overall lap time to 1:26.204s.
Norris couldn’t match him, 0.065s down, leaving Piastri as the only challenger left but he couldn’t better either his team-mate or the Red Bull maestro out in front.
So, once again, a masterful effort saw Verstappen finish a qualifying session on top, beating Norris.
Kimi Antonelli wound up splitting the two McLarens, with Piastri filling in a Mercedes sandwich as Russell rounded out the top five.
A sensational Williams effort saw Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon take sixth and seventh respectively, beating the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
A herculean effort saw Ocon join in the Q3 fun, finishing ninth as Yuki Tsunoda meant Red Bull bookended the top-10.
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