Max Verstappen captures pole for Miami Grand Prix

Miami Gardens, Fla: Yet another packed house of enthusiastic fans await Formula One in South Florida as the series makes its first of three American appearances this season in Sunday's Miami Grand Prix (4 p.m. ET, ESPN). Not even uncharacteristic overcast skies have deterred the F1 faithful or the curious this weekend.

Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen, a two-time Miami Grand Prix winner, claimed pole position for Sunday's race and will start on the front row alongside last year's race winner, McLaren Racing's Lando Norris.

The four-time and reigning F1 champion Verstappen, who is a new father -- he and his longtime girlfriend Kelly Piquet welcomed daughter Lily in the last week -- was optimistic about his chances Sunday and glad to see his Saturday afternoon end on a high note.

Verstappen's qualifying performance proved a strong rebound for the sport's most dominant driver in the last four seasons. He was involved in a pit road incident and handed a penalty during the early afternoon 18-lap sprint race, dropping him to an uncharacteristic 17th-place finish there.

"We need to make less mistakes and we need to find more performance," said Verstappen, who sits third in the F1 championship standings. "It's quite straightforward, just not easy to extract, and that's how it is, but we keep pushing and keep bringing bits to the car to make it faster."

Miami is a special place for Norris, who scored his first career F1 victory at the 3.363-mile, 19-turn Miami International Autodrome last May and answered with a win in Saturday's 18-lap sprint race here earlier Saturday to move within eight points of his McLaren Racing teammate and F1 championship leader Oscar Piastri in the championship standings.

The two McLaren drivers have won four of the five races this season -- three for Piastri and the season-opening Australian Grand Prix for Norris. Piastri will join Mercedes AMG rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli on the second row for Sunday's race -- third place being a career-best grand prix start for the 18-year-old Italian Antonelli.

He became the youngest pole-winner in F1 history on Friday, starting out front in Saturday's sprint. However, hard racing with Piastri on the first corner of the first lap -- plus the pit road incident with Verstappen -- placed Antonelli seventh in the finishing order. Their proximity on Sunday's grid could prove interesting.

"Well, I mean it was very on the limit," Antonelli said of the sprint race start. "To be honest, on the start, I broke traction and that allowed Oscar to come alongside and, obviously, I started turning because the corner was there. And probably we were both on the limit as far as braking and eventually we touched.

"I went and lost many places but definitely tomorrow will be a bit of a different story as I am starting on the second row; but definitely a lot learned from that start."

Another perpetual favorite in Miami is Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles LeClerc, who won pole position here for the 2022 maiden Miami race and has since claimed a podium finish twice including a runner-up to Verstappen in 2022 and a third-place showing in 2024.

He had an incident in the rain just prior to Saturday's sprint race and was unable to compete in that, but the Ferrari team was able to rally putting the popular 27-year-old on track for qualifying. He will start eighth.

His new Ferrari teammate, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, scored an impressive podium finish in Saturday's sprint race. However, for the first time this season, Hamilton did not advance out of second-round qualifying and will start Sunday's race in 12th position.