Perez takes Miami GP pole, Verstappen to start ninth

Sergio Perez claimed his first Formula 1 pole position outside of Saudi Arabia as a crash for Charles Leclerc brought a premature end to qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix — an incident which also compromised his Red Bull teammate, championship leader Max Verstappen.

Leclerc was on a fast lap in the last two minutes of Q3 when he lost control at Turn 7 and spun into the barrier, his second off at that turn so far this weekend.

Perez had set an early banker lap of 1m26.841s which, with the red flags for Leclerc robbing most of the top 10 of a chance to set a second fast lap in the final session, was enough for pole.

Afterwards Perez admitted that he had been struggling with confidence and the balance of the car before a change ahead of qualifying made it come “more alive.”

“I think it’s been my worst weekend up to qualifying,” said Perez. “I just couldn’t figure out how to pull those tenths that I was missing all the time to Max and to the Ferraris. I was just resetting everything we did with a small change into qualifying. Everything came more alive and I think we were just playing with the tools and we put a lap when it mattered.”

It was a similar story for Fernando Alonso, who was second and set his Q3 time of 1m27.202s being set on used tires.

“It was a good qualifying,” he said. “I think FP3 was a little bit messy for us, we tried different setups and they didn’t work but the car came alive in qualifying so I’m extremely happy with P2 — first row of the grid, so lets see what we can do.

Third was Carlos Sainz, salvaging something for Ferrari, while Kevin Magnussen was a fine fourth for Haas in the team’s first of three home races this season.

“It was a very tricky quali for all,” said Sainz. I think it’s very tricky to find the right feeling with the tires around this tarmac and it was a fight the whole way through quali and very easy to make mistakes. It was getting windier and windier, which for our cars — or for our car in particular — is quite tricky to drive. But yeah, in general, P3 is where we’re targeting to be but I think today we could have been even better.”

Pierre Gasly was fifth, ahead of George Russell while Leclerc took seventh despite his off, and Esteban Ocon eighth. Verstappen was classified ninth — he abandoned his first flying lap in Q3 after being compromised by wind in Turns 5, 6, and 7 and didn’t have time to make another attempt due to the red flag.

It was a similar story for Valtteri Bottas who also failed to set a time in Q3. Alexander Albon will line up 11th, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg who missed out on the top-10 for the second race in a row.