The perennial fascination with Formula One is that even seasoned fans cannot predict the heroes and zeroes of a race weekend. Here we are locked in the doldrums of another Red Bull demonstration season, with news that its genius designer Adrian Newey would rather head to the south of France in a camper van than further endure the seedy goings-on at Milton Keynes (don’t blame him), and who emerges as the real story of the Miami Grand Prix? Lando Norris for his crowd-pleasing first win in F1? Partly. But even he has to acknowledge the force of nature that is Kevin Magnussen.
K-MAG isn’t the Copenhagen street corner rap artist his nick-name suggests, but a pugnacious driver for the Haas team whose evangelical need to defend positions in F1 often leads him into trouble. And so it was in Saturday’s sprint race where he became embroiled in a heated dog-fight with Lewis Hamilton for the final point. Hamilton’s Mercedes clearly had the ECU chip from a 2018 E63 S, because it wasn’t much faster than the sedan down the back straight, allowing K-MAG to render any DRS assistance useless. And so began one of those see-saw battles predicated on two cars with vastly varied levels of performance on different parts of the track.
This continued for so many laps that we all but forgot Hamilton had been incredibly fortunate not to be penalized for understeering into a couple of Astons and ultimately ending Lando’s sprint race. The television director clearly agreed—Haas’s small band of advertisers must have been whooping for joy as Verstappen and the fast crew were ignored in favor of Magnussen doing whatever was humanly possible, short of lobbing nails out of his cockpit, to keep Lewis behind him. Sprint race naysayers should at this point have admitted it was a far better spectacle than any free practice session
The television director continued to ignore the front-runners (Ferrari delivering on its “still not as quick as Red Bull” F1 contract, Ocon and Gasly wanting to kill each other, etc.) as Hamilton made it past K-MAG, only to have the Dane hang-on and cause the first of his—wait for it—three 10 second penalties. Eventually Hamilton got clear, Verstappen won the race, and we’d been granted a few brief glimpses of Danny Ric driving a blinder to secure a totally unexpected 4th place. (The euphoria would be short-lived when he was dumped out of Q3 for the main race just two hours later.) Much has been written about the surface of this Miami circuit, most of it deservedly uncomplimentary. But the rollercoaster of emotions was only just beginning.
Anyone who has ever raced a motor car could see what was happening to Magnussen in that race—could sympathize with how he ended up over-driving the car and having it all turn messy. I watched it thinking, “He’s stepped well over the line there and deserves a bigger punishment.” It took the ever-level-headed Martin Brundle on the U.K. Sky feed to persuade me otherwise, as he defended hard racing and said matters never became dangerous. Brundle is the oracle.
Post-sprint, Magnussen gave one of F1’s truly great post-match interviews. Yes, he deserved the penalties, he told the camera. But he was a team player, and once his teammate Nico Hulkenberg had cut the DRS lifeline, Magnussen was toast. He didn’t want to drive like that, but he had to, you see, to protect Hulk’s seventh-place points. If K-MAG actually was a Copenhagen rap artist with an album to sell, I’d have purchased several copies right there and then. His confession was supported by Lewis shrugging to the same camera a few minutes later; he’d enjoyed the hard racing, too. We proxy non-experts had been offended on their behalves, but the actual competitors just got on with it. Didn’t care. No problem. Probably that’s why they’re F1 drivers and we’re not.
Being Spanish is also a problem, according to Fernando Alonso. His summary of Hamilton’s first-corner understeer episode was that Hamilton would have been penalized if he had been born outside the coasts of Mother England. I’ll leave you to judge just how silly that sounds, but will acknowledge that Carlos Sainz probably seconded Alonso’s motion, as Sainz tussled with Piastri in the closing stages of Sunday's race and spent much of the ensuing time on the radio demanding justice (only to receive a post-race penalty that dropped him from 4th to 5th). This was strange from Carlos—he’s been so calm and impressive this year. We have to assume something else was irritating him that we don't know about.
Race day arrived with high temperatures and a pleasing lack of celebrity cutaways on the broadcast. Verstappen got away clean, Leclerc didn’t, Sainz did, and Perez later confirmed that Hamilton’s sprint-race start line led to some epic understeer into Turn 1 that nearly saw him T-bone his teammate. Imagine the bollocking from Helmut ‘Voldemort’ Marko if Perez had cracked Verstappen! Avada kedavara! The ensuing ducking, jostling, and avoiding left Leclerc in second and Piastri in third. At this point, Lando wasn’t even on the lips of the commentators. Until…
Verstappen pitted on lap 23, surely in part so the team could assess potential damage from him clouting a cone. But by this stage, Lando Norris had established he was loving his car and his tires, setting lap times that had his competitors worrying. He was leading the race when on lap 29 the safety car made a cameo appearance. The cause? K-MAG! Clearly unhappy at the lack of air-time from the trackside cameras, Magnussen sent a speculative half-move into Turn 3 and pitched Logan Sergeant into the barriers. The clouds parted, angels sung, and Norris ambled into a pit stop that saved him huge amounts of time. At this point Norris was already the driver of the day for me, but what happened next merely confirmed it.
Where at first it looked like Norris had fluffed the restart, with Verstappen tucked ominously under his diffuser, the Brit turned imperious, building a steady lead over the Dutchman. He was seven seconds clear by the time he crossed the line, and his emotions spilled into a paddock that has no doubt craved this victory more than any other. Would not blame them if they’re still celebrating.
In all, it was a weekend of gleeful chaos and unexpected triumphs, which is not what most assumed Miami could deliver. Of course, Christian Horner was on hand to dampen the mood during the media post-mortem. He told us that Max’s floor had been badly damaged mid-race (RIP the chicane bollard, we hardly knew ye), so it’s likely we can’t circle the Miami GP as the beginning of the end of the Red Bull Empire. But it did, at least, offer us hope for more such excitement in the coming races—some of which will no doubt hinge on how the great K-MAG decides to influence matters.
Top illustration: Ralph Hermens
