Hakkinen: Two winners – Verstappen and Formula 1

In Miami, Max Verstappen took his third win of the 2022 season, with both Ferrari drivers on the podium. Mika Hakkinen, two-time world champion, shared his thoughts on the events of the past weekend.

It was another big win for Max and as he has won every race he has completed this season it is clear that the Red Bull car is faster than the Ferrari.

Verstappen had a very confident race. He had a very good start, passing Carlos Sainz to take second and overtaking Charles Leclerc on lap 9 was just perfect. The Red Bull car has a significant top speed advantage on the straights, so Charles was unable to overtake Max even when using the DRS system.

When the period of a safety car on track, which started due to the collision between Lando Norris’ McLaren and Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri, was over, Charles attacked again very actively, but Max managed to defend the lead. He had complete control of the race.

Ferrari is planning to make some technical innovations and the Scuderia drivers desperately need this to counter Red Bull as it looks like this team is very strong now. Its only weakness is the reliability of technology. Especially on Friday Max had problems with the car. But if they can achieve perfect reliability, Ferrari will struggle.

The weekend was strange for Mercedes, but in the end 5th and 6th place can be considered a pretty positive result. On Friday it looked like they had a very fast car – George Russell had the fastest time in practice and Lewis Hamilton was 4th. But when the track conditions changed, their speed disappeared somewhere on Saturday.

In the race George did an excellent job, took care of the tyres, was able to drive a fairly long first stint, waited for the safety car to appear on track and took advantage of it successfully. I know Lewis was not happy with the tactics the team suggested to him, but the safety car situation in Mercedes could not be influenced in any way. They should be happy that despite all the trouble, both their cars finished in the top six.

The fastest driver outside of Ferrari and Red Bull was Valtteri Bottas in Miami. He drove an Alfa Romeo car, showed the 5th result in qualifying and held this position for a long time in the race, but in the end he made a small mistake that left both Mercedes drivers through.

However, Valtteri did a great job this weekend. You can’t fight for wins with the Mercedes car, yet the W13 is still third fastest, so Bottas deserves credit for leading Hamilton and Russell in qualifying, as well as McLaren and AlphaTauri racers. He was upset that he missed 5th place, but earned points and stayed on the 5th line of the championship.

In the end, after such a weekend, there were two winners – Max Verstappen and Formula 1. In the paddock we saw legendary athletes such as Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Venus Williams and David Beckham, as well as Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States – this says the weekend in Miami was special.

Seeing a Formula 1 race with all these stars shows that Liberty Media has made great strides. When the third American round, the Las Vegas Grand Prix, appears on the Formula 1 calendar next year, interest in the championship will only increase.