Lando Norris won the race ahead of Max Verstappen after team-mate Oscar Piastri had tailed the Dutchman through the opening stint.
Both McLarens were fast all weekend, even if Piastri didn’t have all the go-faster bits the other car had.
Norris’ win was, of course, aided by the Safety Car after Kevin Magnussen nerfed Logan Sargeant out of the race.
But while that gave him track position, everything that came after the resumption of hostilities was sheer performance.
The Brit drove away from Verstappen. He didn’t simply hang on or play dirty, he just put his head down and motored away at the front of the field.
In summary, McLaren beat Red Bull Racing in a head-to-head battle. It’s the first time that’s happened in almost two years.
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A contributing factor was the tyres, which were up and down for almost every driver all weekend.
Speedcafe confirmed the rubber all came from the same batch (remember that Supercars race at The Bend a few years back?) with the difference, according to Pirelli, tyre prep.
Hot conditions, tyres with a narrow operating window, and a circuit with little deg all amplified the differences in how each driver brought their tyres up to temperature.
For Norris, he was able to do so behind the Safety Car while his direct rivals, who’d boxed just before the interruption, had to do so under racing conditions.
Good car pace, a dash of tyre life advantage, and a better opportunity to bring that rubber in all combined to make Norris untouchable in the final stint.
That difference is clear when compared to Piastri, who had been in the lane just before the Safety Car was deployed.
The Australian had been rapid in the opening stanza but on the hard rubber he had fitted on Lap 27, that pace disappeared.
At the restart, he battled Sergio Perez, which overheated his tyres, and thereafter Carlos Sainz was all over him like a cheap suit.
Following his second stop to replace a front wing, Piastri too demonstrated there was strong pace in the McLaren as he claimed fastest lap.
Verstappen’s complaint was a lack of grip in the run to the flag, too.
Red Bull Racing had pitted him on Lap 23, meaning his tyres were six laps older than Norris’, and four older than Piastri’s (who led the race as the championship leader pitted).
With those factors taken into consideration, the car that has been the class of the field all season was suddenly no match for a rival with similar pace and better tyres.
It’s game on for the rest of the year, especially with Ferrari having shown its somewhere in the mix, too. Though Red Bull Racing remain strong favourites.
But while tyres played a key role in deciding the grand prix winner, they also significantly impacted Daniel Ricciardo.
After a promising performance in China was cut short, putting the RB fourth on the grid for the Sprint was a standout performance – the sort of effort Red Bull is looking for from its superstar driver.
He was expected to fall back during Saturday’s 19-lap encounter but instead he was inch-perfect to keep the chasing Ferraris at bay – intrinsically faster cars. It was a superb drive.
And then, from the Sprint to Qualifying, the pace disappeared.
He was eliminated in Qualifying 1 with the 17th fastest time and left confused. His engineer was confused, too.
Nothing of note had changed, they argued, and yet, suddenly, Ricciardo was without the top-four running pace he’d had earlier.
In the race, he made little impact, though that was always going to be the case given he lined up last on the grid courtesy of a penalty carried over from China.
He was stuck behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen in the opening laps (not the first time that weekend the Dane had been the cork in a bottle), but even after the restart Ricciardo just didn’t have the pace.
As Ricciardo so aptly showed in the Sprint, even with a faster car, passing is not easy. Add in a dash of overheating tyres and Ricciardo’s race needed something extraordinary to happen to be anything but underwhelming – F1 is just too competitive now for an RB to carve its way through the field.
And still, there are those who’ve pointed to that performance as evidence of Ricciardo’s Sprint result being a flash in the pan. It’s a narrow view that obfuscates the steps that were evident in Japan and again in China.
What we saw on Friday afternoon and the Saturday in Miami was the old Daniel Ricciardo. What was seen on Sunday was simply the extension of a poor grid spot and a competitive midfield, where small deficits are amplified by intense competition.
Encouragingly, it also suggests that should RB and Ricciardo get it together, there is genuinely a chance of strong results.
We’d seen glimpses of that potential courtesy of Yuki Tsunoda that the RB isn’t a bad car, but we’d not seen it driven to that level. And therein lies the rub.
At the moment, Tsunoda is a more consistent performer but his peaks aren’t as high as Ricciardo’s. Conversely, his lows aren’t as low either. For Ricciardo, it’s just a matter of eliminating those off days – even though there were clear reasons for it in Miami.
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