Formula 1 will make its first of three visits to the United States this weekend for the third Miami Grand Prix.
It is also the second consecutive sprint round of the championship, where teams again face the prospect of limited practice time and an extra, 100 kilometre race on Saturday morning before setting the grid for Sunday’s grand prix.
But with McLaren and Mercedes both bringing their first set of major upgrades to their cars this weekend, there will be plenty of focus on the front of the field – as rivals Ferrari rock up with a new sponsor and a new look for the weekend.
Here are the talking points for the Miami Grand Prix…
Miami upgrades for McLaren and Mercedes
The sixth round of the championship and the first to be held outside of Asia and the Middle East, the sport heads to the Miami International Autodrome for the first of six North American rounds in this year’s championship.
While Red Bull and Max Verstappen continued their winning ways last time out in Shanghai, the weekend saw mixed fortunes for two of their closest rivals, McLaren and Mercedes. McLaren’s Lando Norris and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton shared the front row together in the sprint race, with Hamilton taking a podium finish in second. In the grand prix, Norris managed to split the Red Bulls, with good fortune, to finish behind Verstappen – also in second place.
So far, Ferrari have been the closest contenders with Red Bull in 2024 and the only team to win a race other than the world champions. However, McLaren and Mercedes are both planning to bring their biggest upgrades packages of the season to date in Miami this weekend, hoping to claw back some ground on Ferrari and, with it, Red Bull.
Mercedes technical director James Allison has expressed his hope that the new parts for this weekend could give them the marginal gains that will earn them additional places on the grid with an extremely close field in qualifying. At McLaren, team principal Andrea Stella said his team’s package will target an improvement in tyre degradation, but has insisted that fans should not expect them to make the same leap forward in performance that they did with their two major upgrades last season.
Either way, Miami is an unusual choice to introduce a significant set of upgrades on a car, given its temporary circuit status and the fact it is another sprint weekend. But either team comes away with a bigger share of points this weekend, then it will certainly have been worth it.
New sponsor, new look
Unlike their rivals in McLaren and Mercedes, Ferrari will run a largely unchanged car from the one they raced in Shanghai. However, the Scuderia will be sporting a very different look in Miami this weekend following the announcement of the team’s first official title sponsor since 2021.
Technology brand Hewlett-Packard have been confirmed as Ferrari’s newest and biggest sponsor with their logo joining the team’s car and driver overalls from this weekend. To mark the announcement the team will incorporate blue into the colour schemes of its drivers’ overalls and helmets, plus the SF-24’s livery.
Blue has appeared on the team’s cars before, notably in the season-ending United States and Mexican Grands Prix in 1964, as well as on the overalls used by Ferrari drivers and mechanics over the sixties and seventies.
Ferrari say they are commemorating 70 years of their iconic brand existing in the North American market. The fact that the colours happen to closer match their major new partner, it seems, is a happy coincidence.
The team will be hoping for a better showing at Miami this weekend than they had last year, where Sainz and Leclerc finished only fifth and seventh, respectively. After neither Ferrari took a podium finish last time out in Shanghai, getting a top three will be the goal this weekend.
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Sargeant’s final home GP?
Logan Sargeant is alone on the Formula 1 grid in that he enjoys three grands prix in his home country each season. However, as a Floridian, the Miami Grand Prix is certainly the most ‘home’ round of the three for Sargeant.
The Williams driver has certainly made history over his time in Formula 1 so far, being the first full-time American driver in the sport in well over a decade and become the first to score a world championship point in thirty years. However, Sargeant is almost definitely the most under-pressure driver of the 20 on the current grid due to some well-publicised struggles over his rookie season and the opening five rounds of 2024.
As he heads into his second Miami Grand Prix, Sargeant sits rock-bottom in the drivers’ championship and does not look likely to remain on the grid to see a third in 2025. He is in desperate need of a clean weekend after crashing in practice in Japan and spinning in qualifying in China before he copped an unfortunate penalty in the grand prix for passing Nico Hulkenberg illegally behind the Safety Car.
With rumours swirling about Mercedes’ potential interest in filling Lewis Hamilton’s 2025 seat with F2 driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli – who recently completed his first ever run in a Formula 1 car in a private test at the Red Bull Ring – there is even speculation that Antonelli could be fast-tracked into Sargeant’s seat once the Mercedes junior reaches 18 years old and becomes eligible for a superlicence.
If that comes to pass, Sargeant would be out of his seat before the next round in America – the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in October. That will make this weekend Sargeant’s potential last race in his home country, unless his form notably picks up over the coming months, that is.
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Setting up for the sprint race
Straight after the opening sprint round of the championship in Shanghai, the second will take place in Miami this weekend.
Unlike China, which the sport hadn’t visited in five years prior to the last round, the teams have plenty of data from two previous Miami Grand Prix weekends to help prepare their cars ahead of the single hour of practice available to them. Whether Miami will prove a good venue for a sprint race remains to be seen, but with three major overtaking opportunities around the lap and a generally low-grip surface having a habit of prompting more mistakes from drivers than other circuits, this could be one of the more eventful sprints we’ll see all season.
Last time in Shanghai, teams had the opportunity to modify their car set-ups following the sprint race for the first time, allowing them to try and improve their cars over the grand prix sessions rather than be stuck with what they had. Red Bull certainly made the best of this, improving Verstappen’s RB20 to take pole and victory in Saturday’s qualifying and Sunday’s grand prix. However, Mercedes and Hamilton managed to take their car in the wrong direction, going from fighting for the sprint win on Saturday morning to struggling to reach the top ten on Sunday.
Hamilton took responsibility for the way that the team went with his set-up, insisting that he will not be making that mistake again. But it was an example of how the dynamics can truly change between the sprint race and the grand prix under the new sprint round regulations, which arguably manages to inject more intrigue into the format compared to last season.
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Advent of Andretti
Despite having the door on their potential entry into Formula 1 for 2026 seemingly closed in their face by FOM and the ten existing teams after it was opened for them by the FIA months prior, Andretti have insisted that their preparations to join the grid “continue at pace.”
Last year, Andretti team CEO and former F1 driver Michael Andretti was a highly visible presence at the Miami International Autodrome as he looked to help lobby the powers that be to approve his team’s bid to become the sport’s 11th team. A lot has changed over the 12 months since that time, however, and this weekend could prove another key moment in their efforts to become a fully-fledged Formula 1 team.
Reportedly, Michael Andretti will meet with his potential F1 counterparts over the weekend to discuss their potential entry in a face-to-face basis. While it is difficult to see how the existing team’s concerns could be addressed that will suddenly make Andretti’s place on the grid more likely, given that the primary objection has been the idea of splitting the sport’s revenues 11 ways instead of 10, this could still prove to be a pivotal weekend for the future of the sport.
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