Every Miami Grand Prix winner, measured: five races, and pole has won only one of them
Five Miami Grands Prix have been held since 2022, and only one was won from pole: Kimi Antonelli's in 2026. Max Verstappen won from ninth in 2023, and Lando Norris took his first win there in 2024. Every winner, grid slot and safety car, measured.
In five Miami Grands Prix, pole has won once. The other four winners started third, ninth, fifth and fourth.
Only Las Vegas, also at one in five, matches that in our race-history series: at Zandvoort pole won every modern race, at Abu Dhabi twelve of seventeen. The Miami International Autodrome, laid out around the Hard Rock Stadium, has a long back straight that makes passing possible and a race long enough for strategy to swing it. Max Verstappen won the first two, the second from ninth. Lando Norris won his first Grand Prix there in 2024, Oscar Piastri won in 2025, and Kimi Antonelli finally converted pole in 2026.
Every radio message from the recent races is in our
Verstappen: 2 wins (2022, 2023) and 2 poles (2024, 2025) that he did not convert.
Lowest winning grid slot: 9th, Verstappen in 2023.
Every car finished in 2023.
A safety car or virtual safety car in four of the five races. Only 2023 had neither.
The safety cars
Year
Safety cars
Virtual safety cars
2022
1
1
2023
0
0
2024
1
1
2025
0
3
2026
1
0
Deployments counted from race control messages.
2023: Verstappen from ninth
Verstappen's qualifying ended early when a red flag stopped the session before his final lap, and he started ninth. His team mate Sergio Perez started on pole. Verstappen ran a long first stint on hard tyres, came through the field and won by more than five seconds, with Perez second.
2024: Norris, finally
Norris started fifth and had not yet made his pit stop when a safety car came out, which let him stop and rejoin in the lead. He held Verstappen off to the end for the first Grand Prix win of his career, at his 110th start. After the flag:
"I guess that's how it's done. Finally. Oh, I'm so happy." Norris won the world championship the next year, by two points, in Abu Dhabi.
2025: Piastri from fourth
Oscar Piastri won from fourth in 2025, passing Verstappen's pole-sitting Red Bull on track, with Norris second for a McLaren one-two. His engineer:
"Well done, Oscar. Great job. Really smooth. Pace was phenomenal."
Miami is the best overtaking race of the season
We counted every on-track pass of 2026 from the lap by lap running order, and Miami produced 70, more than any other race this year. Shanghai is second on 60 and Baku third on 43. Monaco, at the other end, managed 4.
That is the explanation for the grid slots in the table above. A winner can come from ninth here because the
circuit genuinely allows it: a long back straight into a heavy braking zone, a second DRS run along the water, and a surface that lets a following car stay close enough to use them. Most street circuits offer one of those three. Miami offers all of them, which is why it keeps producing winners who did not start at the front.
The full season count, and the one lap in Baku where twelve cars passed a single McLaren, is in every 2026 overtake measured.
2026: Antonelli converts pole
Kimi Antonelli became the first driver to win the Miami Grand Prix from pole, one of his eight wins of 2026, with Norris second and Piastri third from seventh. The radio from that race is not in our archive: coverage of 2026 starts at the Canadian Grand Prix. His season is measured in Kimi Antonelli's 2026.
Every radio message quoted: our own team radio archive
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We counted every on-track pass in the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix from the lap by lap running order. There were 43, but twelve came in a single corner when Oscar Piastri locked up at the restart. Baku ranks seventh of the fifteen races of 2026, which is not what its reputation says.
Lando NorrisMcLaren · Miami Grand Prix 2024 · Race · 22:37:05 local
DriverI guess that's how it's done. Finally. Oh, I'm so happy. I knew it, huh? I knew it when I came into this morning. I said, today is a day full of opportunities. And I nailed it. You nailed it. Thank you so much.
