Max Verstappen secures record-breaking pole for Miami Grand Prix

Max Verstappen secured yet another pole position for the Miami Grand Prix becoming the first driver in 31 years to take pole position at each of the first six rounds of the season.

The championship leader secured his 38th pole position after taking the top spot on the grid for Sunday’s grand prix by a tenth of a second from the two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr.

After an extremely exciting Sprint race earlier in the day, a few drivers were keen to recover and Lewis Hamilton was one of them, waiting in line at the end of the pitlane to be among the first to exit.

However, Hamilton’s performance wasn’t all that great; after the initial set of laps in which the Ferrari duo claimed the lead, he placed just ninth, a tenth ahead of Sergio Perez and another tenth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg. Meanwhile, the Aston Martins were running fifth and sixth before everyone was relegated by Max Verstappen.

The reigning world champion was running on a different schedule and only made an appearance after the halfway point, taking a single flying lap on a repurposed set of softs. Most of the drivers had already started working again to get ready for another attempt when Verstappen came back to the pits.

Surprisingly Sainz improved to beat the times once more although he was running on used rubber and after fitting on a new set, he overcame Norris, with Piastri coming in fourth. Even after the phase of second flying laps marking the last run of drivers at risk, Verstappen continued to improve, this time on a new pair of softs.

In the bottom bracket, Tsunoda moved up to 12th place to advance alongside Albon, both of them bouncing back from Friday’s SQ1 elimination. Bottas was eliminated in the last 0.010 seconds, while Hulkenberg and Alonso barely managed to get through.

Sargeant was also eliminated alongside Zhou, Magnussen, and Ricciardo. Magnussen blamed traffic at Turn 17 for his elimination, while Ricciardo was extremely dissatisfied with the outcome following his exceptional Sprint qualifying and race performance.

Verstappen was among the first to take to the track in the second qualifying round, once more sporting used pair of softs. In doing so, he was quickly eclipsed by the Ferraris and the McLarens as Leclerc set the fastest time, 0.439 seconds ahead of Verstappen’s. Hulkenberg performed remarkably in sixth place, trailed by the Alpine duo, Tsunoda, Perez, Russell, and Hamilton.

The Aston Martin duo needed to put in a lot of work for their second run as they placed further behind. The second run began with the routine line-up at the end of the pitlane just minutes before end session as drivers exited the pits carefully, giving space between their cars.

Alonso was unable to make any headway and he soon realized that Q3 was beyond reach. Meanwhile Stroll managed to record a better performance, but still proved to be ineffective. Hamilton managed to find six tenths and advanced to the second spot on the time sheets. Leclerc nevertheless maintained the fastest time in Q2 while Verstappen made improvements to move up to second place.

Hulkenberg launched the third qualifying round with a laptime of 1:29.104 as Hamilton, Russell, Perez, and finally Verstappen followed in order of fastest time. Second and third place went to the Ferrari duo Leclerc and Sainz.

The McLarens were the final team to complete their flying laps, with Piastri finishing fourth fastest and Norris, the only driver to run fresh medium rubber during the entire qualifying session, placing an unexpected sixth.

Verstappen secured his 38th pole position, his 7th consecutive, as Leclerc and Sainz were unable to challenge due to their heavy losses in the second sector. Perez moved up to 4th with Norris ending up in 5th, a tenth ahead of Piastri.

2024 F1 Miami Grand Prix Qualifying Results