Max Verstappen was in a class of his own in final practice for the Miami Grand Prix to leave him poised to equal a Red Bull record this weekend.
The 60-minute session took place in front of two of the world’s wealthiest men, with Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk a guest of Red Bull, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also in attendance.
Verstappen’s performance was rich in pace as he set a leading time of one minute 27.535s, and the likelihood of a 23rd career pole, which would put him in line for a 38th victory with Red Bull that would equal the mark set for the team by Sebastian Vettel.
The 25-year-old finished a staggering 0.406s ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who was twice on pole for the sprint and grand prix last weekend in Azerbaijan, but needs to improve considerably if he is to make any inroads on Verstappen in qualifying.
Leclerc at least managed to sandwich the Red Bull drivers as Sergio Perez had to settle for third quickest, just over half-a-second adrift of his team-mate, with Carlos Sainz in his Ferrari 0.590s back in fourth on the timesheet.
With a track temperature of just over 46 degrees Celsius and air temperature pushing 29, the heat was definitely on for all the teams and drivers, albeit with a 40 percent chance of rain for qualifying to potentially spice up that occasion.
Following an early sighter lap from Alpine’s Esteban Ocon of 1:31.125s on Pirelli’s medium rubber, it was not long before the Frenchman was deposed from the top of the timsheet.
Perez posted the first meaningful lap on soft tyres with a time of 1:29.266s but within moments Verstappen shaved three-tenths of a second to leapfrog the Mexican.
With just over 15 minutes elapsed, the duo again traded blows – Perez setting a time of 1:28.641s only to be crushed by the Dutch driver by almost seven-tenths to underline his superiority.
Leclerc at least managed to split the Red Bull duo at that stage but was only marginally quicker than Perez as the Monégasque found himself 0.657s behind Verstappen.
Sainz finally offered a threat to Verstappen’s dominance of the proceedings as he moved to within 0.156s of the two-time F1 champion.
With the grip on track starting to ramp up, according to Ocon, Verstappen soon set the fastest practice time overall with a lap of 1:27.669s, beating his leading time from FP2 by 0.061s.
Of course, Verstappen was not finished there as he lowered his own mark by a further 0.074s to 1:27.595s, before shaving off a further 0.060s with eight minutes remaining, and that is where he stayed.
Behind the leading quartet, for Alpine, looking to recover after back-to-back bad weekends in Australia and Azerbaijan for very different reasons, the team suggested Miami may prove more beneficial.
Ocon and Pierre Gasly were fifth and sixth quickest, almost nine-tenths of a second behind Verstappen, and with just 0.021s separating the duo.
The field behind was unusual in its make-up as Valtteri Bottas finished seventh in his Alfa Romeo followed by the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, putting in the shade the Mercedes pair of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
Williams’ Alex Albon was also faster than 10th-best Russell, with the Briton 1.071s off the pace, a tenth-of-a-second ahead of 13th-placed Hamilton as the W14 again proved problematic.
Hamilton complained about his front tyres vibrating early on and later bemoaned his car “losing a lot more on the straights”, a comment echoed by Russell who said at one stage that the “balance is okay. Just struggling for overall pace.”
In between the Mercedes pair were Haas’ Kevin Magnussen and Fernando Alonso in his Aston Martin, the team enduring an off-colour practice as Lance Stroll was 14th.
For McLaren, this track appears to clearly not suit the MCL60 as Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were down in 18th and 19th, with only Nyck de Vries’ slower in his AlphaTauri, 1.912s down.
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