The fifth edition of the Miami Grand Prix gave Formula 1 another chaotic and competitive weekend around Hard Rock Stadium. The race started three hours earlier than planned because of weather concerns, but the change did not reduce the action on track. Kimi Antonelli turned pole position into another victory, even after losing the lead on the opening lap, while early incidents involving Pierre Gasly and Isack Hadjar reshuffled the field. The result was a race that produced clear winners, painful losers, and another strong reminder that Miami has become one of the calendar’s most unpredictable stops.

Antonelli’s win stood out because it was built on control rather than a perfect start. The Mercedes driver again struggled off the line, but he recovered with a strong strategy call and held off pressure from Lando Norris to win. That made it his third straight Grand Prix victory from pole, a rare sequence in Formula 1 history. McLaren also left Miami with real momentum after Norris and Oscar Piastri both finished on the podium, while Williams, Alpine, and even the broader championship picture all found reasons to leave encouraged. On the other side, Ferrari, Red Bull’s second seat, Audi, Aston Martin, and George Russell all had weekends that exposed problems they still need to solve. Miami was not just a race winner’s story. It was also a weekend that showed which teams are building form and which ones are still fighting for answers.

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Winner of the Grand Prix

Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Kimi Antonelli won the Miami Grand Prix and extended his championship lead to 20 points. He started from pole, lost the lead early, and still recovered to finish first by using a strong undercut and clean race management. The Mercedes driver became only the third racer to win his first three Grands Prix consecutively, joining Damon Hill and Mika Hakkinen. That makes his Miami result another major milestone in a sophomore season that is starting to look like a title fight.

Antonelli also showed more maturity under pressure, especially with Lando Norris close behind in the final stint. He said, “I think I feel much more comfortable in the car, much more in control as well.” His pace and composure gave Mercedes another clear win. Even with the start issues, he is proving he can still deliver when the race gets tense.

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Franco Colapinto had his best weekend in Formula 1 so far. He qualified eighth, beat teammate Pierre Gasly for the first time this season, and finished seventh after Leclerc’s penalty promoted him one place. For Alpine, that was a strong sign that the upgrades may have worked and that the team can fight in the midfield.

Colapinto drove a clean race and avoided the mistakes that hurt several others around him. He made the most of Alpine’s improved pace and a lighter chassis. It was also a confidence-building result for a driver who has faced criticism since replacing Jack Doohan. The weekend gave Alpine proof that progress is possible when both pace and execution come together.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Lando Norris left Miami with a win in the Sprint and second place in the Grand Prix. That was a strong return for McLaren, especially because both drivers stayed in the podium fight across the weekend. Norris also pushed Antonelli hard in the closing stages and kept the pressure on until the flag. The result helped McLaren strengthen its position in the championship and close the gap to Ferrari.

Even so, his pace and consistency showed that McLaren’s upgrade package is working. With Oscar Piastri also on the podium, the team left Miami with a clear step forward. It was not the victory Norris wanted, but it was still a major positive.

Losers of the Miami Grand Prix

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Charles Leclerc had one of the most frustrating Sundays of the race. He started strong, took the lead on lap one, and then lost ground after another slow Ferrari pit stop. He still fought back into third before a final-lap spin damaged his race completely. After the stewards gave him a 20-second penalty, he dropped from sixth to eighth in the final classification.

Leclerc said after the race, per SI, “I’m very disappointed with myself, it’s all on me.” That was a harsh end to a race that had once looked like it could produce a podium. Ferrari’s car showed some pace, but the execution again let the team down. If the team wants to stay in the title picture, it needs cleaner stops and fewer self-inflicted errors.

Isack Hadjar, Red Bull

Isack Hadjar’s Miami weekend ended in another early exit. He crashed into the wall at Turn 14 and finished the race as a retirement, adding to a difficult start to life alongside Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver had already been off the pace in qualifying and sprint qualifying, and the race only confirmed how much work he still has to do. His crash also removed any chance of a useful result.

Hadjar admitted the mistake was his own, and the emotion was visible after the incident. His season has brought only four points from six scoring chances, which is not enough for a Red Bull seat under normal standards. The team will be hoping this is a learning weekend rather than a pattern. For now, the gap to Verstappen remains a major concern.

Aston Martin and Cadillac

Aston Martin and Cadillac both left Miami with more questions than answers. Aston Martin’s best result came from Fernando Alonso in 15th, while Lance Stroll finished 17th in both the sprint and the Grand Prix. Cadillac was more reliable, but both cars still finished outside the points in 16th and 18th. For teams at the back, that is not enough when others are making clear progress.

The future aspect is simple: both teams need more pace before the season slips away from them. Cadillac in particular is still early in its project, but slow progress will not help build momentum. Aston Martin, meanwhile, needs a stronger response after another flat weekend. The data from Miami may help, but the results do not.

George Russell, Mercedes

George Russell came into the season with championship expectations, but Miami was another weekend where he trailed Antonelli. He qualified and raced well behind his teammate, and the gap was clear throughout the event. Russell did recover to fourth after Leclerc’s late problems, but he was never a real threat to the win. That is a concern because Mercedes expects both cars to challenge at the front.

Russell’s problem is not one race, but a pattern. Antonelli has now beaten him in every Grand Prix qualifying and race since Australia. The Miami result made the gap in the standings even harder to ignore. He will need a stronger response in Canada if he wants to stay close in the title fight.

Audi, especially Nico Hulkenberg

Audi had a weekend full of reliability problems and no points to show for it. Nico Hulkenberg’s car suffered issues across the weekend, including a first-lap retirement in the Grand Prix after a fire in the sprint and more trouble in qualifying. Gabriel Bortoleto also had a rough weekend, finishing outside the points despite a better Grand Prix result than qualifying suggested. The team is still learning, but the losses are piling up.

Hulkenberg called it a “proper character building weekend,” which fits the overall picture. Audi says it is playing the long game, but long-term plans still need cleaner race weekends. If the team cannot finish sessions and races, it cannot make real progress. Miami showed the work still ahead.

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Conclusion

Miami delivered a race full of movement, mistakes, and momentum shifts. Antonelli proved again that he can handle pressure, McLaren made a clear step forward, and Colapinto gained real confidence. At the same time, Ferrari, Red Bull’s second seat, Audi, and others left with unfinished work. The season is still open, and Canada now offers the next chance to change the story.

Nineteen-year-old Kimi Antonelli delivered a masterful performance at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix, securing a spectacular victory for Mercedes. Starting from pole position, the Italian teenager expertly controlled the pace of the race from lights out to the checkered flag, ultimately crossing the finish line to extend his lead in the World Championship.

The weekend in Florida also cemented Antonelli’s name in the Formula 1 history books. By taking the win, he became the first driver ever to win his first three Grands Prix from pole position in a row. It was a flawless display of driving that firmly established the young talent not just as a rising star, but as one of the sport’s most formidable current competitors.

The stewards at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix have handed Charles Leclerc a 20-second post-race time penalty, ruling that the mechanical damage his Ferrari sustained on the final lap did not justify the multiple occasions he left the track and gained an advantage.

After glancing the left-hand side of his Ferrari against the wall on the last lap, Leclerc was left unable to negotiate right-hand corners properly and ultimately finished sixth, costing himself what he acknowledged would have been third or fourth place.

The stewards’ document, issued at 17:21 local time on May 3, confirms that Leclerc’s car spun at Turn 3 on the final tour, hit the wall, and continued. According to the ruling, Leclerc himself reported to the stewards that the damage forced him to cut chicanes rather than negotiate them normally. The stewards’ conclusion was that the mechanical condition was not sufficient justification for repeatedly leaving the circuit and benefiting from it, in breach of Article B1.8.6 of the FIA F1 Regulations.

The penalty is a drive-through converted to 20 seconds added to his elapsed race time.

A five-second penalty would not have changed his classified position, but the 20-second sanction is enough to drop him below Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton into eighth.

The Stewards Considered the Unsafe Car Question Too

The document also reveals the stewards examined whether continuing to race with a mechanically compromised car constituted a separate offence in its own right. They found no evidence to support that charge, so no additional penalty was applied on those grounds. It was a narrow escape on that front. Three separate post-race investigations had been opened against Leclerc, covering the track limits breach, the unsafe car question, and an allegation of causing a collision with George Russell.

Leclerc himself had already been forthright after the flag, telling media he had put “a very strong race in the bin” in the space of four corners.

“It’s all on me. I don’t have much to add other than that. Very disappointed with my mistake. It shouldn’t happen.

“I pushed very hard in the second-to-last lap. I thought I was a good idea to let Oscar go for me to get the Overtake. I knew it was going to be very difficult to get in front otherwise.

“It was a very poor decision and in the space of four corners I put a very strong race in the bin. I am very frustrated about that. Not much more to say.”

Kimi Antonelli took the race win for Mercedes, with Lando Norris second and Oscar Piastri third, the entire 57-lap contest completing without rain disruption after the start was brought forward to avoid incoming storms.

Antonelli’s third consecutive victory from his first three race weekends of the season is the story of this championship right now. For Leclerc, Miami is a race that will be filed under “what could have been” for a very long time.

Charles Leclerc‘s final lap at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix was not a tidy one. After clipping the wall and limping around with a damaged Ferrari, he lost fourth place to both George Russell and Max Verstappen in the closing moments. He now faces a stewards’ hearing that covers multiple alleged offences simultaneously.

The stewards confirmed they will investigate Leclerc for continuing to race in an unsafe condition.

On top of that, he is separately under scrutiny for making minor contact with Russell on the final lap and for leaving the track multiple times and allegedly gaining an advantage. That is three investigations from one chaotic last tour of the Miami International Autodrome.

Sky Sports F1‘s Martin Brundle wasn’t ready to throw Leclerc under the bus for any of it.

“He got it home didn’t he. He had four wheels on it, all pointing roughly in the right direction,” Brundle said. “You can’t just go ‘I bumped the wall, I will park it and get out of the way’. George Russell’s car was every bit as unsafe and he carried on.”

The Wider Stewards’ Queue Is Long

Leclerc isn’t the only one with explaining to do after Miami.

Russell has been noted for moving under braking, while the Russell-Verstappen contact in the latter stages of the race is also under investigation.

Verstappen is also under investigation for supposedly crossing the white line at the pit exit after his stop, a four-time world champion who had already spun on the opening lap and fallen down the order, with FIA officials set to take a closer look once they had more information from the full 57-lap race distance.

The Russell-Leclerc contact happened at Turn 17 on the last lap, the same corner where Russell then squeezed past to snatch fourth. Whether the stewards view Leclerc’s battered Ferrari as a genuine safety hazard or as a car that was damaged but still under reasonable control will be the core question. And Brundle’s point about Russell continuing in a similarly compromised state will be hard for the stewards to ignore when making that call.

Leclerc had hit the wall and was visibly limping around in those final laps, which is precisely why he became such easy prey at the end. The argument that a damaged car should always be parked is a reasonable one on paper. In practice, F1 drivers nurse battered machinery home regularly, and the line between “unsafe” and “damaged” has always been a judgment call. Sixth place 0 where Leclerc ultimately wound up – beats a retirement.

Whatever the stewards decide, the real headline from Miami still belongs to Kimi Antonelli, who won the race for Mercedes ahead of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The rest was paperwork.

The 2026 Formula 1 season is four rounds old and already the sport is planning its escape from it. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem used the Miami Grand Prix weekend to confirm what many in the paddock had been expecting: V8 engines are coming back to Formula 1, and the manufacturers don’t really get a veto.

“It’s coming, oh yes, it is coming. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of time. In 2031, the FIA will have the power to do it, without any votes from the power unit manufacturers,” he told reporters, per Reuters.

The V8 was ditched for a V6 turbo-hybrid in 2014 , a decision driven by the automotive industry’s push toward electrification and a desire to attract manufacturers like Audi and Honda.

The 2026 ruleset deepened that commitment with a near-50:50 split between combustion and electric energy, which has significantly changed the racing with battery management being key. The result has been messy enough that just four rounds into the 2026 campaign, tweaks have already been made to reduce the reliance on energy harvesting and increase safety.

The V8 Timeline Is Already Set

Ben Sulayem’s target is 2030 – one year before the current engine regulations reach their formal end. The math on how that happens is pretty basic. A change can be made for 2030 if a super-majority of four of the six manufacturers vote in favour. Otherwise, the FIA can force through the switch for 2031.

Ben Sulayem claims the manufacturers are broadly on board, though he’s comfortable either way.

“You will hear about it very soon. It will not be something like now, which is a 46-54 split. There will be very minimal [electric] power,” he said. The new V8s would retain some electrification – just nowhere near the current formula’s near-equal weighting between combustion and battery power.

Why V8 and not V10? Ben Sulayem has an answer.

A return to V10 engines has been ruled out, mainly because they are no longer relevant to road cars. He described the V8 as “the most popular and easiest to work with,” adding that its sound is incredible while the mechanics of it isn’t overly complex, and it’s of course a lighter option of engine.

After his V10 idea was dropped last year, Ben Sulayem outlined an idea to move to V8s in 2029 or 2030 instead, with more standard components and sustainable fuels as the point of appeal for engine manufacturers.

The FIA president was blunt about what happens if manufacturers drag their feet. “I’m targeting 2030. One year before the maturity [of the regulations]. It will happen. But let’s say the manufacturers don’t [vote for it], then one more year and it will be done. It’s not a matter of, ‘Do I need their support?’ No, it will be done. V8 is coming.”

Why the Manufacturers Are Less Opposed This Time

The automotive industry is no longer so keen on fully electric cars, and F1’s engine suppliers are now open to the idea of increasing emphasis on combustion power once again.

That’s a big change from just a year ago, when Ben Sulayem raised the idea of V8s returning to F1 but manufacturers were not in favour, particularly with it being so close to the changes for 2026, so the concept was put on the backburner.

Talks are already underway about the 2027 power unit regulations, with a move towards a 60-40 split between combustion and electric power being mooted ahead of the next full rules change in 2031.

F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has also identified cost-cutting and weight reduction as priorities for the next cycle of rules, and there is alignment between F1 and the FIA that the engine needs to be simpler and more traditional, while still retaining enough appeal for engine manufacturers.

The 2026 regulations were designed to make F1 relevant to an industry sprinting toward electrification. That industry has since changed its mind, and the FIA is using that reversal as cover to do what Ben Sulayem wanted to do all along. Whether he gets it done in 2030 or 2031 is almost beside the point. The V6 hybrid era has a confirmed end date, and the sound you remember from 2006 to 2013 is scheduled for a comeback.

Carlos Sainz has been a man under pressure all season. Williams is running at the back of the midfield, Sainz’s two points are the only ones the team has scored so far in 2026, and Miami wasn’t exactly the clean weekend the team needed. It got messier when Max Verstappen got involved.

During the early section of the race, a near-miss between Sainz’s Williams and Verstappen’s Red Bull prompted an immediate angry response on team radio. “What the f*** was that?” Sainz demanded. His engineer Gaetan replied simply: “We’ll report.” That wasn’t enough for Sainz, who made his feelings clear: “I think he pushed me off. He thinks he can do whatever he wants just because he’s racing in the midfield.” Gaetan’s response, “That’s a long race, a long race,” was about the most diplomatic thing said between them all afternoon.

Verstappen in the Midfield Is a Different Animal

Verstappen has said Red Bull halved the gap to the leading pack with the upgrade package it brought to Miami, but the three-time world champion is still nowhere near where he’s used to racing. He called the new 2026 cars “anti-racing” and likened them to Mario Kart, while strongly hinting after the last race that he was seriously considering walking away from the sport at the end of 2026.

A frustrated Verstappen stuck in the pack is a very different proposition from the one cruising at the front with a second of clear air.

Sainz’s frustration is understandable, however.

Only moments before this, the Alpine of Pierre Gasly was flipped after contact with Racing Bull’s Liam Lawson, who later retired with damage received by the hit. This followed Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar hitting the wall at Turn 14 after he skimmed the inside of Turn 13, breaking his suspension arm and leaving him angered, thumping his steering wheel in annoyance.

An F1 fan from the UK has highlighted a problem on social media that prevented them from viewing the Miami Grand Prix sprint race, despite having a valid ticket. They compared the race venue to other European Grand Prix circuits where the issue is reportedly non-existent.

The fan uploaded a video from the rpace stands, showing how the crowd stood up when the F1 cars passed by, blocking their view entirely.

Expressing their disappointment, the fan revealed how they had flown all the way from the UK for the Miami GP and had paid for seats from which they could not view the race.

Unfortunately, one pregnant woman with them found it difficult to stand throughout the race, and thus, they were left with no option but to remain seated.

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The fan revealed how they had been to other F1 races, such as the Spanish Grand Prix and the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, but never experienced their view being blocked this way.

Asking F1 and the Miami GP organizers for help, the fan wrote on Instagram:

“Flew from the UK for the Miami GP and paid for seats we couldn’t actually use. Everyone stood the whole race, so we had zero visibility.

“We’ve been to other races like Spanish Grand Prix and Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and never experienced anything like this.

“One of us is pregnant and physically couldn’t stand for long periods just to try and see.

“Surely this isn’t the experience fans should have.

“Just hoping this can be made right.

“@f1 / @f1mia can you help?”

Red Bull Racing driver Isack Hadjar has been disqualified from the Miami Grand Prix qualifying after the sport’s governing body, the FIA, found his RB22 F1 car’s floor to be non-compliant with the 2026 F1 technical regulations. As a result, Hadjar will start the race from the pit lane instead of starting from P9.

The FIA discovered in post-qualifying scrutineering that the floor of the RB22 protruded by two millimeters, more than what had been specified in the technical regulations.

The Red Bull F1 team introduced a new floor to Hadjar’s car as part of its upgrade package for the Miami GP. However, that has not met with the FIA’s specifications. FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer stated:

“The lhs and rhs floorboard were protruding 2mm out of the reference volume RV-FLOOR BOARD.

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“As this is not in compliance with Article C3.5.5 of the Formula 1 Technical Regulation, I am referring this matter to the stewards for their consideration.”

Red Bull did not go against Bauer’s report. Announcing the penalty, the FIA report read:

“The Stewards heard from the team representatives of Car 6 (Isack Hadjar). They did not dispute the findings of the Technical Delegate that portions of the LHS and RHS floor boards were protruding 2mm out of the reference volume RV-FLOOR BOARD.

“This is a breach of Article C3.5.5 of the FIA F1 Regulations and the usual consequences follow an admitted breach of the technical regulations.”

Following the disqualification, Red Bull issued a statement in which team principal Laurent Mekies apologized on behalf of the team. Planet F1 reported:

“We made a mistake and we respect the decision of the stewards. No performance advantage was intended nor gained from this error.

“We will learn from this incident and assess our processes to understand how it occurred and to take steps to ensure it cannot happen again.

“As a team, we apologise to Isack, and to our fans and partners. We learn the hard way today but we will move forward.

“Now our focus is on converting yesterday’s encouraging showing into a strong race performance this afternoon.”