Max Verstappen gave his position back to Lewis Hamilton during Saturday’s Miami Grand Prix Sprint after stewards ruled him beyond track limits for an overtake. However, the Red Bull driver grew visibly frustrated when the Ferrari driver failed to capitalize quickly enough, venting over the radio before completing a legitimate pass for sixth place that he kept to the end of the 19-lap sprint.
The incident unfolded on Lap 9 at Turn 11, which also featured a parallel battle between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell at the same time. It began when Verstappen moved to the inside lane approaching Turn 11, applying pressure on Hamilton, who was running ahead of him.
Verstappen squeezed Hamlinton through the corner with all four wheels over the white line, completing the pass in territory the regulations do not permit. Hamilton went straight to the radio:
“Max overtook me, going off the track.”
Red Bull race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase relayed the instruction to Max Verstappen to give the position back. The Dutchman complied, dropping behind Hamilton. But Hamilton did not immediately try to pull away, and Verstappen’s patience lasted about as long as one corner:
“Why isn’t he overtaking? Come on, mate, my god! F**ks sake.”
The frustration was short-lived in its impact on the result. A few laps later, Max Verstappen wound himself up and completed the same move cleanly at Turn 17, staying within limits this time and making the pass stick for P6. He remained there to the finish line, and with Antonelli subsequently penalized for track limit violations and pushed back from fourth to sixth post-race, Verstappen was elevated to fifth.
It was Verstappen’s best result of the 2026 season so far. He came from fifth on the grid with used mediums, while most of the rest of the top 10 started on fresh sets. Only Verstappen and Isack Hadjar in the second Red Bull were on used rubber, which made the performance more meaningful than the position alone suggested.
The RB22 had genuine pace at the Miami International Autodrome for the first time in 2026, and it showed. There were not enough laps to threaten the Mercedes cars, but the trajectory was clear. On the same lap, the Antonelli-Russell battle was equally dramatic.
Russell tucked into Antonelli’s slipstream on the back straight and made a move at the final hairpin for fourth. Antonelli retaliated with a pass under braking at Turn 11 the following lap to reclaim the position, before the championship leader’s track limit transgressions cost him.
Max Verstappen is happy with the changes in RB22 at Miami: “It feels more together.”
Red Bull arrived in Miami with a meaningful upgrade package, one of several teams to bring significant developments to the fourth round following the extended break. McLaren’s changes were similarly effective, with Lando Norris taking the Sprint pole and converting it into victory.
Red Bull‘s updates were less extensive but still represented a step, and Max Verstappen demonstrated that in practice. Running second to Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari in the extended 90-minute session, Verstappen set a 1:29.607 – three tenths off the pace.
In sprint qualifying, Verstappen advanced through all three segments and qualified fifth with a 1:28.461, less than six tenths off Norris’s pole time. Verstappen showed that the RB22 was at least pointing in a better direction. The sprint race confirmed it. Ahead of the sprint, Max Verstappen had already signaled what to expect (News.Verstappen):
“It feels more together. Of course, there are still things we are working on, but it’s been a really positive step for us. The last few races, we were almost a second behind. We are almost half that gap now, so that’s positive. We are still very weak in the first sector, which is mainly high speed, so we know that we need to work on that. But yes, the rest seems a bit more together, so I’m a bit happier with that. We’ve cleared the midfield. It’s still not where I want it to be, but it’s allowing me to trust it a bit more.”
With one more session before qualifying and the Miami Grand Prix itself, Red Bull will have a final window to refine the setup for Max Verstappen.
Edited by Pranay Bhagi