We pause our typical post-race Drivers' Championship standings update to bring your attention to an all-important midfield battle that cemented itself at the Miami Grand Prix: the newly corporatized Williams vs. real midfield team Ferrari. This is not an exaggeration, or fluke of the weather, or any particular driver underperformance. As Lewis Hamilton said after the Ferraris qualified P8 and P12, "On pure pace, we've been out-qualified by a Williams." Fact check: The Ferraris were outqualified by two Williams cars.
Charles Leclerc's despondency post-qualifying was equally damning. "When I finish a lap, again today in qualifying, I feel very satisfied with my lap, but it's only bringing us, whatever it is," Leclerc said. "P8 or something."
There is another side to the story, which is that Ferrari's suffering means Williams's joy. But let's get the misery out of the way first. After being the fastest car on the grid after the summer break last year—beating out even the McLarens to close the season—Ferrari's development has seemingly gone nowhere, just in time for the most exciting driver lineup on the grid. Systemic dysfunction can be glossed over when a team can win out on pace; when the pace isn't there, it's all anyone can talk about.
Take, for example, this past weekend. At no point during the race were the Ferraris ever marginally in contention for a high points finish. Hamilton recovered from a P12 start, having to fight Esteban Ocon in a Haas to make it into the points before the first stop. Both cars had good pit-stop luck thanks to holding out long enough for a virtual safety car, though all that earned them was exiting the pits in P8 and P9, behind Carlos Sainz Jr. Even an incredible double overtake of Sainz—Leclerc pushing his former teammate to defend while Hamilton waited to pounce on the scraps, nearly overtaking both drivers—only laid the groundwork for Ferrari to have a strategy disaster with its cars in P7 and P8 instead of P8 and P9.
Due to splitting strategies to start the race, Hamilton sat behind Leclerc in medium tires with an earlier window of good performance. Rather than eat into his tires trying to fight Leclerc on track, or spend the rest of the race in Leclerc's dirty air, Hamilton radioed to his team, asking that they arrange a swap. The team took multiple laps to make a decision, including a spin on the classic Ferrari "we are checking"; the final decision was that they would rather Hamilton—again, on the faster tire that was hitting its peak performance window—remain within DRS range of Leclerc in order to fend of Sainz behind.
Hamilton responded as diplomatically as can be expected for a man who has gone from Pete Bonnington to six races in the Ferrari strategy wringer. "Man, you guys ..." he said, before adding, "This is not good teamwork. That's all I'm gonna say." Soon after the complaint, Ferrari changed their minds and radioed to Leclerc to let Hamilton through, the first time they asked Leclerc to do so. Leclerc let Hamilton through immediately.
As it turns out, it was not all Hamilton had to say. In a radio message displayed on broadcast after Leclerc let Hamilton through, Hamilton reminded the team, "In China, I got out of the way when you wanted me to—" to which his engineer, Ricardo Adami, interjected, "Understood." (Not only did Hamilton get out of the way in China, he helped initiate the driver swap.) Hamilton replied, "Yeah, have a tea break while you're at it."
Not satisfied with evoking just one killer line, Ferrari did its best to ensure two. After being released from Leclerc's dirty air, Hamilton was able to steadily close the gap toward Kimi Antonelli in P6. He did not, however, manage to build a significant margin past Leclerc before his tires started to fall off in performance. As Leclerc's hard tires slowly came to life and he came within DRS range of Hamilton, Ferrari once again putzed around a bit before eventually calling for Hamilton to swap back with Leclerc. Hamilton made the swap; a while later, as Adami radioed to Hamilton to let him know the gap to Sainz—1.4 seconds—Hamilton sniped, "You want me to let him pass as well?"
It is not uncommon for driver radio messages to be bitey or a bit rude or to imply some level of awkwardness in the post-race debrief. It is very uncommon for the messages to not just come from a point of being understandably steamed, but also be funny on merit. Ticking off both drivers with team orders in a race they finished P7 and P8 is a remarkable feat; it is even more impressive with drivers who have historically been amenable to teamwork, and who seem to get along great off-track.
Ferrari has had plenty of amusing-to-less-amusing radio incidents in the past, to the point of becoming something of an inside joke: Leclerc maintains a collection of noteworthy exchanges with his race engineers that he calls "the Words of Wisdom." Of course, Leclerc has known little but Ferrari in his years as an F1 driver. These quirks of a fundamentally broken system are regular to him, if not to Hamilton, who said he told team principal Fred Vasseur after the race, "Dude, calm down. Don't be so sensitive." (Hamilton was surprisingly chipper in the post-race interviews; as a counterpoint, Leclerc looked like a man who had fought a thousand wars.)
So there is something funny in how Williams's better weekend occurred in the context of a driver semi-disobeying team orders. Before the first pit stops, Albon was instructed by his engineer to "maintain a gap of at least a second to the car ahead" while they managed an issue with his car. The car ahead was, of course, Sainz. Albon, who was just in the process of overtaking Sainz, replied, "I'm about to overtake him, so ..." and, with new instructions to "crack on," did so. He went on to drive his Williams to a P5 finish on merit, securing his best non–Red Bull season points total just six races into the season.
After the race, Albon made a gently self-deprecating crack at his previous performances, which belied his great pace so far this year: "I don't think I've ever seen Max from start to finish, not even in my Red Bull days," Albon said. "So it was nice to see him." It will also be a relief to Albon that he has been consistently outperforming Sainz so far this season, after being accused of only looking good next to pay-driver teammates. Sainz gets leeway for having to adjust to a new team, though he was lucky not to have ended both his and Hamilton's races, much less be penalized, with his last-lap dive-bomb. Williams team principal James Vowles implied some further discussion about Albon's failure to give Sainz a tow post-race, but even with that minor drama aside, there is no better time to become a Williams fan. The same cannot be said for Ferrari.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled Drivers' Championship update. Oscar Piastri continues making his case as McLaren's best driver, once again leading Lando Norris as the McLarens sprinted away from the rest of the field. Piastri becomes the first driver since Mika Hakkinen in 1998 to win three straight races for McLaren. Norris had another good recovery drive after some costly mistakes. George Russell is squabbling with Max Verstappen in the Drivers' Championship standings; Russell secured yet another podium in Miami thanks to a perfectly timed safety car, despite not being faster than his teammate this weekend. He can't keep getting away with it!
Ferrari is currently fourth in the Constructors' Championship, contending with Red Bull (mostly Max Verstappen). The good news for Ferrari is that they will not easily replicate or surpass the lows of the double disqualification they secured earlier on in the season. The bad news for Leclerc and Hamilton is that the team sure looks like it's trying its hardest.
