2023 Miami Grand Prix: Sunday Tyre Analysis

Mediaon May 8, 2023

2023 Miami Grand Prix: Sunday Tyre Analysis – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won his second consecutive Miami Grand Prix, ahead of his team mate Sergio Perez who started from pole. Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso, who had got underway from P2 on the grid, completed the podium. Perez and Alonso started the race on P Zero Yellow medium tyres, swapping them for P Zero White hard on laps 20 and 24 respectively. Verstappen started on the hard and managed to get into the lead before stopping on lap 45. He completed the final 12 laps on the medium, passing his team mate a couple of corners into his out-lap, to reclaim the lead.

All the teams adopted a one-stop strategy but seven of them split the strategies between their drivers by starting on different compounds. Ferrari and Williams decided to start both their drivers on the mediums, while McLaren was the only team to take the soft at the start, hoping to make an early stop to comply with the regulation to use two slick compounds during the race.

Williams driver Logan Sargeant completed the most laps on the hard. He put them on during lap two and maintained them all the way to the finish: a total of 54 laps. Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou completed the most laps (26) on the medium, while McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was the most prolific exponent on the soft for five laps at the start.

Around halfway through the race, all the drivers were on the hard for seven laps. Among the drivers who started the race on the medium and soft, the last driver to make a stop was Alonso on lap 24. The first driver to switch from hard to medium was Zhou on lap 31.

Alonso set the fastest lap on the hard tyre (1m30.519s) while Verstappen set the fastest lap overall with a time of 1m29.708s on the medium. Lando Norris set the best time of the two drivers on the soft: 1m33.869s.

After overnight rain, the weather was cloudy for today’s race with temperatures that peaked at 30 degrees centigrade, while asphalt temperatures remained between 35 and 43 degrees.

Mario Isola – Pirelli Motorsport Director

“The Miami Autodrome race was intense, with Red Bull claiming a fifth consecutive win since the start of the season. Pirelli tyres played an important role in the duel between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez right from the start, with differing tyre choices from the two team mates: Perez going for the expected medium from pole position while Verstappen, halfway down the grid, opted for the hard. At the chequered flag Verstappen led Perez home by five seconds, underlining how the range of compounds brought to Miami allowed for different strategies that were nonetheless quite close in terms of overall race time. It’s no coincidence that a total of seven out of 10 teams chose to split the tyre choices between their two drivers. The hard (C2) tyre showed practically no degradation, allowing the drivers to push hard right to the end of long and hard-fought stints on it. This was ably demonstrated by Verstappen, who did 45 laps on the hard tyre – with plenty of overtaking – before stopping for the medium. The medium tyre also worked well, especially in terms of graining, which wasn’t as much of a limiting factor as expected, especially in view of the rain that fell overnight. Fernando Alonso’s long initial stint of 24 laps on this compound, for example, was one of the keys to his fourth podium from five races.”