2025 Miami GP Raceday Preview

Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2025 Miami GP Raceday preview.

2025 Miami GP Raceday

Another day and another loser yesterday, or rather three losers. Well not quite. The good news is that our ante post bet on Charles Leclerc for the Sprint race was voided as he was officially classified as a Did Not Start. That is two points back in the coffers and as close to a winner as you will get from me this weekend.

Today’s race is likely to be a lottery. Safety cars are a big feature in races here, and it was Lando Norris who was once again the beneficiary of one in yesterday’s sprint race. It certainly is his lucky track.

We have had three races here, and none have been won from pole position. The winner has come from third, ninth and fifth on the grid. That contrasts with the fact that four of the five races in 2025 have been won from pole, the other was from second place.

Clean Air Advantage

The clean air advantage is huge with these cars so the race leader holds an advantage. The Jeddah race was won at the first corner, with Piastri getting the jump on Verstappen off the line. It was game over from that point as Piastri was the lead car.

But being the lead car might not be enough today. The high chance of a safety car deployment throws up a randomiser and then we have the weather forecast. The official F1 forecaster says ‘Partly sunny with a moderate to high risk of scattered, thundery showers.

Individual showers will be hit or miss, and some could be heavy with lightning’. Accuweather ‘Mainly cloudy and humid; a couple of showers and a thunderstorm this afternoon; rain gear may come in handy; gusty winds and lightning may delay the race’.

So we could get a deluge with lightning thrown in, or it could be dry. I hate forecasts like this. Clearly if we do get wet conditions we will not race. It was too dangerous yesterday and it will be too dangerous today. The race director will wait until the conditions are damp, and suitable for the intermediate tyres.

Wet Tyres

Pirelli make these incredible full wet tyres which rarely get used. They shift a lot of water very quickly, but that water gets thrown up in the air as spray. Twenty cars with four wheels throwing up gallons of spray. Visibility quickly becomes zero for all but the lead car. Piastri said yesterday that he couldn’t see and that was when he was only behind the safety car.

We will not see any action if it is properly wet. If it pours down during the race, expect a red flag. It could be a long race, or rather a lot of sitting about watching the rain and a safety car going round to see if it is dry enough for inters.

Nowadays there is a maximum time limit of three hours, including breaks. What I am unsure about is what happens if the race start is delayed by, say an hour, is the three hour limit taken from when the race should have started, or when it actually starts? There is a limit in terms of daylight as this is not a flood lit track.

Could Get Silly

It could get silly, a bit like the 2021 Belgian GP which was notable for becoming the shortest Formula One World Championship race in history and the only World Championship Grand Prix not to have any running under full green flag conditions. There were only two full completed laps completed behind the safety car before the race was red-flagged on lap 3 and not restarted due to adverse weather conditions.

If it does end up as a rain watching exercise, at least there is the darts to watch on PDCTV.

The nature of the track, and the weather, could conspire to make this a silly race. Silly races can have silly results. It makes picking your selections very difficult. I used to enjoy wet races as you might be able to find some great value, but nowadays, the officials are very quick to throw red flags or deploy safety cars and you don’t actually get much proper wet weather racing. Safety first is name of game. But of course, the showers might miss the track.

My problem is having to write this a few hours before the start of the race and that could make me look even more stupid than usual.

Sau Paulo

At least we know that the pole position driver here is yet to win and they were all dry races. A wet race may make winning from pole even harder if we got multiple safety cars. My mind goes back to last year’s Sau Paulo GP.

It was utter chaos. A wet start, Stroll crashed out on the formation lap and the race director called an aborted start. Polesitter Lando Norris, Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda, and George Russell misinterpreted this message from race control and erroneously left the grid to perform an additional formation lap.

They then had to have a third formation lap and we finally got going. The rain got worse and the safety car was deployed on lap 30 and Colapinto crashed on lap 32 while still under safety car conditions.

Red Flag

That brought out a red flag. Several drivers could then put on full wets whilst sitting in the pits, effectively giving them an advantage, including Max Verstappen, who had started from seventeenth. There was another crash after the restart, another safety car and when we finally got to the finish, Verstappen was the winner.

It was not a race won on merit, it was won because the likes of Norris had pitted for full wets just before Colapinto’s crash. They had lost track position and those that had yet to stop before the Red Flag got to put on full wets under the red flag. They lost no track position and leap frogged the leaders. Silly race, silly result.

If we do get a silly race today, and the ingredients are there, you may as well stick a pin in the list of the drivers and back the one it lands in. But of course, it could be dry.

Australia

We have had a wet race already in 2025, the Australian GP. We had drivers crashing on the formation lap, a delayed start, three safety cars, five drivers not making the finish and one not even making the start.

In the end, the race was won by Norris who had started from pole, proving that even in mad races, being at the front helps. There were some strange outcomes with Antonelli coming from fifteenth on the grid to finish fourth, Lance Stroll finishing sixth from thirteenth, and Hulkenberg finishing seventh from seventeenth. Piastri was the big loser falling from second to ninth.

Looking at the latest forecast, some six hours before the start of the race, there is a 50% chance of showers at race start time and for the two hours after that, The highest chances of thunderstorms are an hour before the start, or an hour after the race is due to end, but weather forecasting is not able to be 100% accurate. It is hot and humid and showers can kick off anytime.

Wise To Wait

What to do? The wise thing is to wait until around fifteen minutes before the race starts and actually see what the weather is. Sadly I do not have that luxury. I am clocking off shortly and getting on the outside of a nice bottle of Zinfandel.

Maybe the odds can make a decision for me?

Lando Norris is the 2.75 favourite, Verstappen 2.80, Piastri 4.50, Antonelli 17.00. Nothing worth taking there with the threat of rain.

We can look to yesterday’s wet sprint race for some inspiration, it was something of a dress rehearsal. The big call in that race was making the switch from the inters to slicks. Those that went for the switch early gained, those that left it late, lost out.

Ironically, if those who left it late had just stayed out, they would have been redeemed by the safety car that came out after Alonso crashed. That took us all the way to the finish so a non-stopper would have done nicely. Such are the fine margins in a silly race.

Big Gainers

The big gainers were Lance Stroll who finished seventh from sixteenth on the grid, Yuki Tsuonda who finished tenth and started from the pit lane (well he didn’t actually in the end, but he was out the back). Lawson finished eighth from fourteenth and Bearman finished ninth from nineteenth.

Of course, there was then a plethora of post-race penalties which changed the official result, but the above positions were correct when the flag fell.

Lance Stroll made up the most places, and he made up a lot of places on the wet in Melbourne as well. He is properly regarded as a pretty poor driver who is only in F1 because his billionaire dad bought him a team. But he has shown some respectable wet weather form over the years. He has also binned it in a wet formation lap, but such is the way of silly races.

The Aston Martin strategists know that in the dry their car has little chance of scoring points. They are happy to roll the dice in changeable conditions as that is their best chance of stealing some points. Stroll is a unpopular character and always a huge price, but he can be as lucky as the next man.

Unfortunately I cannot, but back him I will, just to have someone to root for. He is now doomed.

2025 Miami GP Raceday Tip: 1 point Lance Stroll to finish in the points @ 15.00 generally available

For a semi-sensible bet I’ll go for track specialist Esteban Ocon. He starts from ninth place, a winning starting position here in the past, but that was with Verstappen.

Ocon has had three top ten finishes here. He came eighth in 2022 starting from twentieth and he starts from ninth today in a Haas that has been a better race car than qualifier. He was also runner up in that mad Sao Paulo race last year and won the 2021 Hungarian GP from eighth on the grid in another silly race that featured rain. Ocon has silly race form.

2025 Miami GP Raceday Tip: 1 point Esteban Ocon to finish in the top six @ 8.50 with Betfred

Two silly bets and you can now bet your house that it will be a dry boring race won from pole.

-JamesPunt