Kimi Antonelli’s first joy
A memorable Sprint Qualifying in Miami for Italian fans, who can once again celebrate the pole position of an ‘azzurro’ driver like Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who set the fastest time at just over 18 years old. An achievement valid ‘only’ for the Sprint race, but on a street circuit the Mercedes driver from Bologna had never tackled before, making it his first pole position in F1, beating out the McLaren competition.
The possible mistake
The two Woking cars will line up directly behind Antonelli, with current world championship leader Oscar Piastri qualifying in second place, less than a tenth behind Mercedes #12: “I’m fairly happy, it wasn’t the best lap of my life – the Australian commented to Sky Sports F1 about his performance – I locked up at the final corner, and that’s probably where I lost pole, but it’s still a good result. We’ll be able to fight in the Sprint tomorrow starting from there. I’m quite happy. I think we still have a bit of pace to unlock. We hope so, so we’re optimistic, and we’ll try to regain the position tomorrow in the Sprint, before maybe getting a bit stuck in the fight.”
A good performance, but not enough
Oscar Piastri’s teammate Lando Norris was also partially satisfied, having shown the strong pace of the McLaren but ultimately having to settle for third: “Pretty good – added the Briton – the qualifying was very close, we’ve got good feelings and we’re happy to have put together a good lap. We came close, I don’t think I could have asked for much more. I’ve got a lot of good memories here, but we also have to forget them because they’re in the past now. We need to focus on this weekend and today’s performance, which I think was solid – not good enough – but it also shows how close we are to the Mercedes. We both ended up behind, so we’ve got work to do tomorrow for the Sprint.”
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