A first time
You don’t win seven and four World Championships respectively by chance, and this afternoon in Miami, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen could have yet another great opportunity to show the world all their qualities. What is expected in Florida is in fact the first wet race under this new technical regulation. A significant unknown, which increases curiosity about what we might see on track. But the two champions have already been through a similar situation: they are in fact the ones who won the last two occasions when the first wet race was held in a new regulatory cycle.
The experience of Lewis and Max
Verstappen won at Imola in the 2022 Emilia-Romagna GP, which was the fourth race of the ground-effect car regulatory cycle (just as this is the fourth race of the new technical regulation…), winning in ‘mixed’ conditions, with the first part of the race run on a wet track with intermediate tires and the second half characterized by a drying but still tricky asphalt, with Charles Leclerc well remembering throwing away the podium by spinning at Variante Alta and finishing seventh.
Hamilton certainly does not have fond memories of that race, as he finished 13th and was lapped under the checkered flag. But the Englishman had won at the wheel of the Mercedes in Singapore in 2017, which was the first wet night race in F1 history as well as the first race held in the rain in the era of large cars with ‘wider’ tires introduced that very year. That GP also remains in the fans’ memory, with the big crash at the start involving the two Ferraris of Vettel and Raikkonen and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, opening the way for #44 who won starting from fifth on the grid.
Today in Miami, precisely taking advantage of the rain, one of them could write another, yet another chapter of their legend.
Read more Leclerc disheartened: “In Q3 the others have a different gear, it’s always the same story”
