Formula 1 2026 - Miami Grand Prix

Before the race: 

To have one car burst into flame is unfortunate, two smacks of carelessness, Audi. 

I have been caught in a US thunderstorm before (Gulf of Mexico in my case), I do not blame them for moving the race. Y'all have excessive weather. 

The race itself: 

It all kicked off at the start, didn't it. 

Hadjar Vs his car is one of *the* pictures of sports frustration.  

I sympathiese with Sainz jnr's complaints about Verstappen's aggressive overtaking style. Personal opinion, Verstappen's going to keep doing it until someone counter-bulldozes. Complaining to the stewards doesn't work. 

Sky and BBC both suggested that the way stewards investigations happened at the Miami Grand Prix made it feel like there is one rule for the top of the field and one rule for everyone else when it comes to the timing of penalty decisions. I have tremendous sympathy for the impossible position the stewards are in, and that there's too much going on for them to make decisions on everything at the time. A simple solution might be if they just make a decision that they're going to review everything after the end of the race or maybe incidents after half way through the race will be reviewed after the end of the race. If they stick to a rule like that, people wouldn't complain about inconsistency (or not about inconsistency around this). 

Even amidst the small changes around the rules, one thing doesn't change - Ferrari's strategy causing a driver to have a breakdown on radio. At some point, even a Magic Eightball would do better. Or, the way Andrew Benson phrased it on BBC Radio [slight paraphrase] - "Ferrari's strategy is a persistent mystery to most in the paddock". 

I think that Leclerc should get bonus points for not crashing at the end, not a time penalty, but this is why I am not allowed to be a steward. 

My opinion on the tweaks to the tech regs: 

These changes have been made in the middle of a season, so there is no way they could have been large changes. Verstappen wanted much larger changes and was always going to complain when he didn't get them. Part of Verstappen's problem isn't the regs, it's that Mercedes got the regulations right and designed a car that works under them and that McLaren have been able to catch up a lot more quickly than Red Bull have been able to. While there are reasonable complaints to be made about the new regs, they gave us an interesting Miami Grand Prix, which I thought was impossible.