‘Max was the fastest’: Perez admits Verstappen was too good in Miami GP

Since winning the sprint race and Grand Prix in Baku, Perez had been talking up his title ambitions, but was more subdued when asked about it following the Miami Grand Prix.

“I really wanted the win; it would have meant a lot to me, but it’s about not giving up. It’s a long season ahead and we’ve got to keep pushing and hopefully [there will be] many more good moments for all of us coming.

“Obviously today Max deserved the victory because he was the fastest car out there,” admitted Perez. “Really early on, I saw that the medium was very fragile initially, so I had to protect the tyre quite a lot.

“I could see that Max was closing up on the hards and from that point on, I knew that the race was looking difficult. And then when I went to the hard, Max had very strong pace so we didn’t manage to open a gap, he simply came too close to us.”

Fernando Alonso followed the Red Bulls home as, behind him, Ferrari struggled again with tyre wear: Carlos Sainz crossed the line fifth and Leclerc seventh, as Mercedes celebrated recovering from a slow start to see George Russell classified fourth and Lewis Hamilton sixth, having started 13th. The Alpines showed stronger pace than previously, finishing eighth and ninth, while Kevin Magnussen remained in the points after starting fourth, with a tenth-place finish.

A clean lap by Perez in the final stage of qualifying had been enough to secure him pole position. Verstappen had abandoned his first run after going wide, and was on his second and final flying lap when Charles Leclerc crashed, bringing an early end to the session.

It left the defending champion frustrated at starting ninth, but he calmly accepted responsibility and set out to methodically recover in the Grand Prix.

While race simulations suggested a first stint on medium tyres, followed by hard tyres would be fastest — resulting in the top seven starting on medium tyres — the data was less conclusive for Verstappen.

“In terms of race time, it was very close between doing a medium-hard or hard-medium”, he said. “I just felt like maybe it gave me a better opportunity to get through the fields initially.”

Verstappen wasn’t wrong, although he was caught on the outside of Turn 1 at the start and passed by Bottas, while Perez led away.

By the end of lap one, he was back into ninth, and then eighth a lap later. By lap 14, he was overhauling Sainz for third place, and was then past Alonso and into second after a further lap.

At this point Verstappen was only 3.7sec behind Perez and closing at more than 0.5sec per lap as his harder tyres were proving considerably more durable than the Mexican’s mediums, on a track that had been washed clean by overnight rain

A pitstop for hard tyres on lap 20 handed Verstappen the lead. Emerging almost 19sec behind, Perez began lapping 0.8sec faster than his team-mate, but the gap soon stabilised despite the 20-lap difference in tyre use.

“In the middle of that stint, I was not entirely sure if I was going to make it but then as soon as I was getting close to the number [of laps before stopping, I thought], ‘okay, this is good’.

“So then I started pushing and could extend the gap again, which really made my race today I think, because once we pitted, of course then I had the fresher tires to the end.”

Verstappen only came in with eleven laps to go, emerging from the pits in second, 1.5sec behind Perez. Two laps later he pulled alongside his team-mate on the outside of Turn 1, giving him plenty of space, but easily powering past.

“I had a good battle with Checo,” said Verstappen, not entirely convincingly. “We were free to race and we had a good go at it. But of course, most important is that we don’t touch — that all worked out really well.”

Read the full race report on Monday morning.

2023 Miami Grand Prix race results

*Includes point for fastest lap
**Includes 5sec penalty