2024 Miami Grand Prix: Sunday Tyre Analysis

Mediaon May 6, 2024

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, 1st position, crosses the line to cheers from his team on the pit wall

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, 1st position, crosses the line to cheers from his team on the pit wall

2024 Miami Grand Prix: Sunday Tyre Analysis – Lando Norris secured his maiden Formula 1 win in today’s third edition of the Miami Grand Prix. In Shanghai a fortnight ago, the McLaren driver secured his 15th podium finish without a win, which was an outright record and today that jinx came to an end. Norris thus becomes the 114th driver to have won at least one Grand Prix and for McLaren it was win number 184, the first since Monza 2021, when Daniel Ricciardo led home team-mate Norris to make it a one-two finish.

Also on the podium were Max Verstappen second for Red Bull and Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari, while for the first time this season an Alpine finished in the points, courtesy of a tenth place finish for Esteban Ocon. It’s worth noting that, in all three editions of this race, the driver who started from pole took the chequered flag in second place: in 2022 it was Leclerc, last year Perez and this time Verstappen.

As easily predicted, the one stop strategy was the only plausible one, but first the Virtual Safety Car on lap 22 and then the real one on lap 28 obviously upset the plans, giving those who had not yet pitted the chance to do so while losing significantly less time than those who had already changed tyres. This reshuffled the pack and then the order remained relatively static in the early stages after the restart, at least among the leaders.

On the starting grid, the most popular compound was the C3 with 15 drivers going for what, on paper was the quickest strategy, namely a first stint on the Medium and a second on the Hard. Hamilton, Alonso, Ricciardo and Magnussen opted for the C2, hoping to run as long a first stint as possible, while Bottas gambled on the C4.

A total of 1110 laps were completed with only Sargeant (Williams) failing to finish the race. The C3 did the most work (562 laps, 50.6%) with a slightly higher mileage than the C2 (504 laps, 45.4%). The C4 was only used by the two Sauber drivers, by Bottas for the first 11 laps and by Zhou from his pit stop to the chequered flag and it proved to be up to the task both in terms of degradation and performance.

Apart from the sight of a brand new Formula 1 race winner on the podium in the shape of Lando Norris, there was also a novelty when it came to the Podium Cap which Pirelli provides to the top three finishers in the Grand Prix, as well as the representative of the winning team, who today was McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella. For the Miami event, Formula 1’s Global Tyre Partner prepared a special cap in turquoise, a colour suggesting the waters in front of the city’s beaches, along with stylised palm trees on the peak, an emblematic element of Miami, alongside the flag of the United States of America.

Mario Isola – Pirelli Motorsport Director

“First of all, I want to congratulate Lando Norris on his first Formula 1 win. I am sure he will never forget the emotions he felt in the final kilometres and then on the podium!

Strangely, despite the surprises thrown up by the Safety Cars, first the virtual and then the real one, it was a very linear race in terms of tyre behaviour: just the one stop and tyres that, whatever the colour of their band, degraded relatively little, partly due to the absence of graining and there was also very little in the way of a performance difference between the cars.

That said, we saw that the two compounds most used, the C2 and C3, allowed the drivers to push flat out for almost the entire race, as can be seen from studying the chronology of the lap times, which made for a very interesting race, even if on paper it seemed to be constrained by strategy. Obviously, the VSC and SC ruined the plans on several pit walls, while others were luckier or cleverer, but that’s all part of racing.

As always, it will be important to analyse carefully all the data acquired over the three days of this Grand Prix, because they will produce indications that could be useful for us in terms of compound selection and when it comes to understanding the interaction between the tyres and the various types of track surface. In fact, that’s why Formula 1 is a fascinating sport because every day you can learn something that can lead to progress.”