Miami, Florida – while dawn breaks on the Miami International Autodrome, and a sleepy paddock comes alive, there is a question in the minds of all those who arrive on Saturday at the Miami Grand Prix.
Is this the breakdown of the young Kimi Antonelli?
The phenomenon of Mercedes surprised the grid and he himself, on Friday with a thunderous lap at the end of SQ3, ensuring his first pole position in any format in Formula 1. The return made the story of F1 into two fronts: he not only turned Antonelli into the youngest driver to ensure the postion of the pole in any F1 form from Miami.
“I feel for the moon. I didn’t expect it, but I felt good in the car,” Antonelli said after his incredible performance.
“I was able to improve the lap by return and find that consistency, and that return joined. I am super, super happy with that, and now we will enjoy this moment a little more, but I also want to try to concentrate and concentrate.
However, the biggest challenge for Antonelli comes today.
Starting with him in the first row to be Oscar Piastri, with his teammate from McLaren, Lando Norris, Beind Antonelli in P3. While Antonelli extracted enough from W16 to ensure pole position, keeping the two McLarens at bay will be a much more difficult task. As the F1 race rhythm simulations show, the MCL39 has a slight advantage over the W16:
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F1.com
In addition, Piastri was on the way to take post for himself on SQ3, until a slight block at the end of his last round contributed the Antonteli door.
But that was just a return, can Antonelli hit McLaren’s duo more than 19 laps?
It can reach the beginning, and what happens in curve 1. As all pilots have said this week, and as we have done this season, running in clean air is a great advantage for the driver in the front of the field. Take the only other F1 Sprint races so far this season, which arrived at the China Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton delivered an amazing pole position his own, and running in front in the clean air allowed him to finish six seconds ahead of Piastri, and almost in front of Max Verstappen.
If Antonelli can maintain leadership in the first round, he will have a good opportunity to stun the field once again here this Saturday in Miami.
But if the McLarens can work around them in the first round, it could be their career for the shot.
