The Miami Grand Prix marks the sixth entry on the F1 calendar of this year. Several teams have brought about changes in the run-up to this weekend. Below, I’ll go over what’s new for this weekend and what it might mean for the results on Saturday and Sunday.
Sprint race
Just like the previous round in Shanghai, Miami will be a sprint weekend. Following the new sprint format of this year, that means we’ll have sprint qualifying on Friday, then the sprintrace itself on Saturday. That means that the teams will be able to make changes to the car after the sprintrace in anticipation of qualifying and the feature race later on. We saw in Shanghai that it worked out in McLaren’s favor, while making things significantly worse for Lewis Hamilton.
Newey leaving Red Bull
The big news of the week is of course the announcement that Adrian Newey will part ways with Red Bull. It won’t change much for the team this weekend in a practical sense: Newey never did much work on the ground during a race, his involvement was always behind the scenes. So don’t expect Red Bull to suddenly be floundering like a fish on dry land this weekend. The impact of Newey leaving is something we’ll see over the course of months if not years, rather than in a matter of days.
Technical upgrades
The technical upgrades being brought to Miami are fairly minimal. Most of the teams have brought out cars with better cooling gills to deal with the heat in Miami. This is especially good for Mercedes, as it has been seen that they struggle more the hotter the track is. Toto Wolff had spent some time hyping up the upgrades that Mercedes was bringing to Miami as a crucial step forward, but it looks like that big upgrade has been pushed back a bit to the next race in Imola. This is smart: last year at COTA, Mercedes did bring upgrades during the sprint weekend and it ultimately led to Hamilton getting disqualified. It looks like Mercedes learned the valuable lesson of not bringing major upgrades to a sprint weekend. Hamilton did say there was something small being upgraded, but that does not appear to be in any visible areas on the car.
There’s something else of interest in the technical department this weekend. Almost all of the teams have brought a rear wing that provides medium to low downforce. This fits in nicely with the track characteristics of Miami, where low downforce rewards you with higher speed in the many fast sections of the track. There is only one team that hasn’t done this: Mercedes. They instead went with a rear wing that provides relatively high amounts of downforce. It’s an interesting choice and one that on paper does not make a huge amount of sense.
Other than that, McLaren has also brought out some upgrades to their floor to make it more similar to the floor of the Red Bull.
Special liveries
It’s not just technical changes to the cars coming in Miami. Some teams have also designed a special livery for the first of the three American races this weekend. Ferrari spent most of the lead-up to the weekend teasing a blue livery, in an homage to the blue racing suits that Ferrari used for much of their early history in Formula 1. The final result was a little underwhelming, in that it’s just their regular car with some blue accents.
Racing Bulls instead went all out with their special livery. The team went with bright vibrant colors that almost resemble an oil spill. It’s something that fits in very nicely with the colors of Miami itself and definitely sets the car apart this weekend.
Alpine has a brand new technical director
Alpine has gotten a new addition to the team. David Sanchez, who a few weeks ago stirred up a bit of a tussle when he left McLaren after just a few months, has now joined Alpine. Sanchez is widely regarded as an expert engineer and might just be the type of help Alpine needs right now. At Alpine, Sanchez will be overseeing all the technical stuff without working on any area specifically. He will have three technical directors beneath him who will oversee the specific technical departments.
Williams chassis
Great news for Williams: they finally have a spare chassis! For the first part of the season Williams ran without a spare chassis, courtesy of them working so hard on the main two cars over the winter that they didn’t have time to make a back-up. That’s why Logan Sargeant had to sit out the Australian Grand Prix and why his and Albon’s cars were basically a patch-up job in Japan and China. With a spare chassis now available to them again, they won’t have to worry as much about keeping the car out of the walls.
Sauber personnel changes
A late and unexpected change at Sauber. Bottas suddenly has a new race engineer, something which even he didn’t see coming. It’s a questionable move by Sauber, since the relationship between a driver and his race engineer is a very important one and strongly affects how comfortable you are during a race. An official explanation for this change has not been given, and Bottas dodged the question when pressed on it during his media appearances. Most likely it has to do with Audi already beginning to make changes to the team.
Race conditions: who will do well?
The Miami Grand Prix will be a hot one. In fact, it will be the hottest race we've had so far in 2024. This will most likely be good news for Ferrari. The Italian team still struggles to get temperature in the tyres, so that problem will be somewhat mitigated in these hotter conditions. McLaren on the other hand will most likely struggle a bit with this. And as said before, Mercedes also struggles with the high heat. It remains to be seen whether or not their new air ducts provide enough cooling to the car to offset their troubles.
There is also a slight chance of rain coming, though the odds of that are so small that it’s not expected to have a major impact on the proceedings this weekend.