The responses from the first day of practice, useful for the drivers to understand their own limits and those of the car on a new track like the one built around theHard Rock Stadium a Miami, give us back a picture that is sometimes unpublished and sometimes already seen. There Red Bull, with Verstappen, again to make the fans worry Orange who once again see their pupil stopped in the pits, limited by the reliability of the RB18 as powerful as it is complex. Since it's a new circuit, Max's absence on the track weighs even more. Let's find out who to focus on on this fifth day of FantaF1!
Ferrari – Mercedes: the challenge of the weekend?
Among the positive surprises is the Mercedes, more download thanks to the ported update package, and close to the values of the Ferrari, although this with Leclerc haven't mounted it yet Power Unit updated, let alone tried some aerodynamic solutions brought to Miami. The team of Maranello in fact, he tried to collect as much data as possible before testing new components, given the absolute novelty of this track. But if she succeeded with one rider, with the other, the Spaniard with helmet number 55, she was unable to complete the job she had hoped for, due to numerous mistakes which then culminated in a crash into the barriers in the middle of the second session.
The performance of Mercedes it could be related to the updates but also to the weather conditions, with high temperatures that didn't put the tires in crisis as one would have expected. The problem of pouring although we saw less especially in the first session in which everyone was running at slower speeds, it still remains, but the innovations on both the front and rear wings seem to work. There Mercedes, look closer to the competition than they have been all season and it will be interesting to see if a 'close' comparison between the Brackley stable and their direct rivals of past years, the Ferrari.
Red Bull blindly
Verstappen ran yes and no half session. During the first session, the Dutchman was called to the pits due to a problem with the gearbox, which he replaced between the first and second sessions, which started late for Max to allow the mechanics to finish work on his RB18. Back on track things didn't go any better. After the red flag caused by Sainz, a fire in the brakes appeared on car number 1, due to a hydraulic problem that did not allow Verstappen to steer. Max will therefore have to face the third practice session and qualifying "blindly" without data and with more doubts about the reliability that alternately and especially in the hottest stages returns to worry the RedBull. Checo is also worried about the problems detected by his team-mate as well as the absence of data on race pace and the lack of grip in some points of the track, a problem that could get worse today given that scattered rains are expected during the day and night between Saturday and Sunday.
Concrete Alpine
A good day, that's how they call it Esteban Ocon e Fernando Alonso. Both finished the day without any particular problems, improving between the first and second sessions. There is optimism in the project and in the preparation for the weekend with the most unknowns so far given that it is a track on which there is absolutely no data. Yesterday's goal was to understand and adapt to the very demanding new track which leaves no room for error. The Alpine, which also brought a more unloaded configuration of the rear wing, seems to be able to have its say Miami, more with Alonso that with Or with, but to know where he can arrive we have to wait for the qualifications.
Our advice on who to deploy
Summing up, and in any case putting our hands forward, since we can only base ourselves on what we have seen/not seen in these first two sessions interrupted several times by red flags, let's try to line up the top 5 of this weekend for which we have provided two options:
Team 1 The team of top players: Charles Leclerc – Fernando Alonso – Kevin Magnussen – Guanyu Zhou – Esteban Ocon
Team 2 Bets: George Russell – Sergio Perez – Valtteri Bottas – Esteban Ocon – Mick Schumacher
