With qualifying just over the horizon, Ferrari and Red Bull are locked into the fight for Pole Position with Aston Martin and Mercedes in their wing mirrors. Further down the order, McLaren seem to be on a hot streak, lap time wise, with them seeming to be the quickest of the midfield. With the track getting rubbered in, the lap times tumbled, with the fastest time falling by just over 2 seconds. There was also significant improvement in lap times from last year, even with the resurfacing of the track, with Max Verstappen going up 0.8s on last year’s best time. Let’s dive deeper into the data to see who looks good for qualifying.

Fight for the Pole

The fight for the pole looks to between the Prancing Horse or the Raging Bull. The Red Bulls as in the previous races looks superior in the high-speed turns and long straights while the Ferraris seem to do better on traction limited areas of the track, namely the low-speed corners as well as the braking and acceleration zones. This could indicate that Ferrari have a better understanding of their Mechanical grip. Miami is a balance of low speed, high speed, and long straights so it will be interesting to see where both the teams stack up against each other. Additionally, both teams have got their first big aero updates which would factor in the gap after qualifying. Comparing the fastest lap times between Max Verstappen (VER) and Carlos Sainz (SAI) we can observe that VER opens up a 0.3-sec advantage in the fast-sweeping T4-5-6-7. In these corners, SAI must hit the brakes a little whereas VER has a lot more confidence and needs to only lift off from the throttle. Thus, he can carry much more speed into the fast-sweeping corners. This is a testament to the high-speed downforce and yaw stability that the Red Bull has over every other car on track. Then the gaps rise slowly on the long straights of SEC 2 and SEC 3 with Red Bull having a 5-7 km/hr speed advantage. Ferraris are slightly faster in the slow-speed sections from T11-16, but the delta is not large enough to make up for the time lost.

Are Aston Martin and Mercedes losing ground?

With updates coming on both Red Bull and Ferrari in the last two weekends, Aston Martin and Mercedes seem to be losing ground. In the qualifying simulations at Miami, both teams were slower in all sections compared to Red Bull. Aston Martin’s rear wing update has brought them on par in terms of top speed with Ferrari and Mercedes, but Red Bull still seems out of reach. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will desperately for the updates coming in Imola, hoping that it will give them the jump required to fight the top 2. Between Aston Martin and Mercedes, Aston seem to have better traction coming out of corners, as well as good straight line speed courtesy of the rear wing update in Baku. HAM is quicker than ALO through the slow T14-15-16 section, however ALO is better through all of the sector splits and end up being 0.2s quicker than HAM overall.

The expected top 4 order is Red Bull > Ferrari > Aston Martin > Mercedes.

Can McLaren spring a surprise?

After their worst start to a season since 2017, McLaren, via their update package, had a strong outing in Baku. Analysing the short and long runs in FP2 we can confidently say that they have jumped into the upper end of the midfield battle with Alpine. These are encouraging signs for the Surrey-based outfit as their updates seem to be working and they can better understand their car. Data shows that McLaren has improved massively over high-speed corners and long straights. Sector 1 seems to be their best, with NOR 4 tenths up on GAS and almost 3 tenths up on ALB, which shows that they are better in high-speed corners. Williams, as usual, are a rocket ship down the straights. Alpine an Williams are pretty evenly matched, with Alpine making up the straight line deficit in the corners.

Midfield Pecking order: McLaren > Alpine > Williams.