McLaren celebrated a triumphant weekend at the 2025 F1 Miami GP, with Lando Norris winning Saturday’s Sprint and Oscar Piastri dominating Sunday’s GP race. The team’s commanding pace at the 2025 F1 Miami GP surprised even McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella, who credited engineering excellence and tyre management for their advantage.
A weekend of dominance
In Saturday’s Sprint, McLaren delivered a one-two finish with Norris leading Piastri. Their strong form continued into Grand Prix qualifying, where Norris secured P2 and Piastri claimed P4. Despite early rain around lap 19 and a chaotic race — including Jack Doohan (Alpine) colliding with Liam Lawson (Red Bull Racing), and retirements for Gabriel Bortoleto (Kick Sauber) and Oliver Bearman (Haas) due to engine failures — McLaren’s performance remained untouchable.
On Sunday, Piastri crossed the line with a 4.6-second lead over Norris, while the gap to third-placed George Russell (Mercedes) extended to nearly 33 seconds — underlining McLaren’s superiority in Miami.
“I’m a little surprised that the gap we had today is as big as we saw,” Stella admitted after the McLaren F1 team’s dominant weekend in Miami.
“I thought that we could have had an advantage from a tyre management point of view but I didn’t think that the tyre management would lead to this level of gap throughout the race.”
Stella praised the team’s strong performance in the hot conditions saying:
“One of the matters that still in Formula 1 looks like it’s a little bit of a black art, which is dealing with tyres. I would say especially when it’s hot there’s another characteristic which I think works very well with our car, which is the cooling system.
“I think when it’s hot our car, you can see that is relatively closed from a bodywork point of view because there’s been also great engineering going into the cooling system. So, I think in these conditions we see the excellence of the engineering at McLaren has reached a point where it can make a difference to this kind of extent.”
Overtaking and opportunities
From lights out, both McLaren drivers showed their intent. Norris attempted to pass polesitter Max Verstappen (Red Bull) into Turn 1 but was rebuffed, while Piastri executed a patient and calculated move on Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) on lap 14.
Reflection on the McLaren drivers’ Lap 1 performance in Miami, Stella said, “Let’s say that considering the situation [on Lap 1], it could have been better for Lando to just lift and make sure that he could keep the second position because the car, again with the benefit of hindsight, we see was very fast and he would certainly have passed Max like Oscar and, later Lando, was in the position to do.”
The McLaren team boss continued: “So, I think like every situation in racing, you have to approach with the mindset of reviewing where the opportunities lie, and I think in this case Lando could have been a little bit more patient.”
“But I quite like to see Lando aggressive, going for overtaking the lead of the race and sometimes it’s just the matter of a fraction of a second. In this situation the stewards elected that there was no need to intervene but definitely the manoeuvre was quite at the limit.”
Piastri beats Verstappen to the lead
Later, Norris did pass Verstappen, though by exceeding track limits, forcing him to return the position. That opened the door for Piastri, who seized the opportunity to overtake both and build a race-winning gap.
“Concerning the second overtake, the lap time or race time was lost because he needed to give back the position,” explained Stella.
“It was fair to give back the position because when overtaking we exceeded the track limits so there’s a few things that we need to improve.”
Room for improvement despite Piastri’s victory
While Piastri claimed victory and the lead of the Drivers’ Championship with 133 points — extending his gap over Norris, who now sits second on 115 — Stella identified areas for improvement.
“Certainly there are things to improve even from Oscar’s side, like if you look back at qualifying I think Oscar lost a little bit of rhythm from Q2 to Q3 so even in that case we have some opportunities. I think both drivers are very open to this kind of review, adapt, make adaptations and go again.”
With his victory in Miami, Oscar Piastri now leads the Drivers’ Championship with 133 points, extending his advantage over Lando Norris, who sits second on 115, to 18 points.
