Five weeks of testing, simulator work, and aero packages quietly being signed off in Brackley, Woking, and Maranello, and the first results on who actually used the break well comes in a 12-minute Sprint Qualifying session in Florida heat. Mercedes did not love what it saw.
George Russell rolled out of the cockpit at the Miami International Autodrome on Friday with a sixth-place qualifying result for Saturday’s Sprint. It’s fair to say his rivals that finished in front of him got faster than he expected over the April break.
Norris took sprint pole, with Kimim Antonelli, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, and Max Verstappen filling out the top five ahead of Russell in sixth, and Lewis Hamilton seventh.
Two McLarens, two Ferraris, and an Antonelli-led Mercedes effort that left the senior driver in the team eight-tenths off and looking for answers.
What Russell Actually Said About the Gap
“Pretty surprising how big a jump McLaren and Ferrari made. That’s pretty damn impressive,” he said. “We knew they had probably closed the gap but all day they were quicker than us.”
Ten of the eleven teams brought upgrades to Miami, and McLaren in particular looked to have extracted real performance from its package, with Red Bull also benefitting.
Mercedes, by contrast, looked a step behind the form it carried into the break.
Antonelli and Russell were only fifth and sixth in SQ1, and the takeaway was that the Silver Arrows were nowhere near as comfortable as they had been pre-break.
Russell’s diagnosis from inside the car points at the same limitations that Miami always produces. “Just overheating the tyres a lot. In that twisty section in the middle, I struggled to get the right balance with the car,” he said. “Miami is not a track I love, especially in those hotter conditions but it’s only Sprint Qualifying, so let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
Why Sixth on a Sprint Grid Isn’t a Disaster Yet
Sprints are a strange beast. The race itself is short, the points are thin, and the overtaking windows are limited unless something genuinely chaotic happens at the front. Russell is well aware of this.
“I’ve been quite surprised by the progress of the others. I’m not in a great starting position. The Sprints generally don’t offer that much but obviously China was interesting, which gives an opportunity to have a bit of a race.”
The 2025 Shanghai Sprint produced enough variability to turn a mediocre starting slot into something useful, and Russell is hoping Miami offers a similar opportunity. Fortunately, Sprint Qualifying does not set the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix. There is a full qualifying session still to come, with another shot at decoding why Friday’s car balance went sideways.
Lando Norris won last year’s Miami Sprint ahead of Piastri and Hamilton, and on Friday’s evidence those same three teams are the ones to beat again. The championship is long, but the upgrade war just got a lot more crowded, and Mercedes is currently the team trying to work out what everyone else figured out over the break.
